Source:
Pleming, Clemency. "Did love begin in the Middle Ages?". Oxford Arts Blog. University of Oxford. 14 Aug, 2014. 21 Feb, 2016
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Tuesday, February 23, 2016
The Invention of Love
A few weeks ago, Lexie made a blog post about her reaction to the Blickling Homilies. After reading it, I was wondering if the Anglo-Saxons had more of a "God fearing" relationship as opposed to the focus of todays Christians who focus on Gods love. I left a comment on her post asking her for her opinion. After asking this question I took the liberty of doing a quick Google search and I ended finding the answer to my question and them some. According Laura Ashe, an associate Professor of English at Worcester College, "A series of church reforms in the 12th century took Christianity from a rather austere view of God the Father to a new focus on Christ's humanity." (Pleming). This radical change in the Anglo-Saxons perspective of their God led to a lot of changes in their personal lives. Instead of waiting to escape their horrible lives on Earth for eternal life in heaven, Anglo-Saxons began to start thinking that life on Earth might not be so bad and started to enjoy it more. They started to focus on the "pursuit of self-fulfillment" and romantic love was a good avenue for them to find this fulfillment (Pleming). In her blog post titled, "Did love begin in the Middle Ages?" which appears on Oxford Universities arts blog, Clemency Pleming points out that Professor Ashe doesn't believe that romantic love truly started in the Middle Ages, but rather that it was in the Middle Ages that people began to recognize the idea in their literature and it was because of this that romantic love came into the "mainstream" if you will. While the Anglo-Saxons weren't the first people to ever experience romantic love, they were the first to dedicate an entire genre of literature to the subject. This dedication to the ideas of love and everything that it entails was revolutionary. As the Anglo-Saxons became the English, these ideas grew more and more. In todays world everyone is out to find love. Its so common in our modern stories and songs, its almost impossible to fathom a time in which no one thought about "falling in love". However, before the Anglo-Saxons began to love God rather than fear him, no one really thought of romantic love as we do today. So the next time you are jamming to Adele on the radio, thank the Agnlo-Saxons for bringing Romantic literature into the forefront.
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PLEASE tell me you don't think of Anglo-Saxons as cavemen.
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ReplyDeleteThis is really interesting, and I've never even thought about when the idea of "love" came into marriages. Through history we see a lot of arranged marriages and people marrying to get out of their class, etc. but we never really learn when people started marrying, and even worrying about finding love. I would be interested in learning more about this, and more about the first works of literature that bring in the new ideas of love and bringing in the idea of love in a marriage!
ReplyDeleteIt would be interesting to read some of these texts Danielle. I wonder which ones explicitly dead with the idea of love itself. Obviously, the notion of love is going to appear at least briefly in texts dating all the way back to the ancient Greek epics. However, I wonder which texts really got the ball moving on bringing the idea to the forefront.
ReplyDeleteIt would be interesting to read some of these texts Danielle. I wonder which ones explicitly dead with the idea of love itself. Obviously, the notion of love is going to appear at least briefly in texts dating all the way back to the ancient Greek epics. However, I wonder which texts really got the ball moving on bringing the idea to the forefront.
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