The Loving Subject: Desire, Eloquence, and Power in Romanesque France

by Gerald A. Bond

Gerald Bond explores the rise of a new secular identity that took place in French elite culture at the turn of the twelfth century. While the period is widely recognized as pivotal, and much revisionary work has been done on it, Bond notes that in order to see the changes in the conception of the private secular self the focus must be shifted away from epics and saints' lives, the traditional targets of literary inquiry, to lyric, letters, and marginal texts and images.

Such texts and images can be found at regional courts reasonably independent of the weak and limited monarchy and at schools far removed from the traditional Christian curriculum, where a new and distinctly secular group contested inherited values of class, gender, and person and created distinct patterns and codes of dress, behavior, talk, and pleasure. Translating and using sources that for the most part have never been explored, Bond examines the Bayeux Tapestry and such figures as Marbod of Rennes, Baudri of Bourgueil, William of Poitiers, and Adela of Blois to frame a complex view of the contested reconception of the secular self and its value.

296 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1995

Reviews

[Ella · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 rounded down. It’s dated, but I really see why this book is cited so regularly. It’s a fascinating literary and cultural history, and the chapter analysing embroidery through the lens of rhetoric is particularly good.

[Tracey Warr · Rating 5 out of 5]

A well researched and very readable account of 11th/12th century literature focusing on the poetry of Baudri of Bourgueil, Marbod of Rennes and Guillaume of Aquitaine - The Troubadour Duke, and the literary court and patronage of Countess Adela of Blois. I found this an inspiring and engrossing read.