What do you think?
L'amour courtois ou Le couple infernal
Au XIe siècle, un nouvel art d'aimer surgit dans la société aristocratique occidentale. La femme, naguère encore tenue en mépris par la lourde tradition misogyne héritée des Pères de l'Église, devient alors, dans le chant des troubadours, le principe même et le sens de l'action masculine. Le chevalier, pour mériter sa dame, doit endurer le « service d'amour », véritable ascèse sexuelle et guerrière. Savamment accru par une longue liturgie amoureuse, le désir fait de l'amant le prêtre d'une nouvelle religion dont la femme constitue le centre. Le couple de la « fin' amor » ? dont Lancelot et Guenièvre restent le plus bel exemple littéraire ? est né : couple secret, nécessairement adultère, infernal, écrit Markale, puisque opposé à l'idéal chrétien du mariage. Heurtant morale et religion établies, l'amour courtois opère une triple rupture : dans les mentalités par le retour accepté du féminin, dans les m?urs par la valorisation de l'adultère, et enfin dans la spiritualité. En effet, alors même que grandit l'étonnant culte de la Vierge, la transfiguration courtoise de la Dame en véritable déesse salvatrice ne marque-t-elle pas, au sein de l'Occident médiéval, l'un des aspects majeurs du retour subtil de la Grande Déesse préchrétienne ?
- GenresNonfictionSexuality
252 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
About the author
Jean Markale
190 books44 followersJean Markale is the pen name of Jean Bertrand, a French writer, poet, radio show host, lecturer, and retired Paris high school French teacher.
He has published numerous books about Celtic civilisation and the Arthurian cycle. His particular specialties are the place of women in the Celtic world and the Grail cycle.
His many works have dealt with subjects as varied as summations of various myths, the relationships of same with occult subjects like the Templars, Cathars, the Rennes le Château mystery, Atlantis, the megalith building civilisations, druidism and so on, up to and including a biography of Saint Columba.
While Markale presents himself as being very widely read on the subjects about which he writes, he is nonetheless surrounded by controversy regarding the value of his work. Critics allege that his 'creative' use of scholarship and his tendency to make great leaps in reasoning cause those following the more normative (and hence more conservative) mode of scholars to balk. As well as this, his interest in subjects that his critics consider questionable, including various branches of the occult, have gained him at least as many opponents as supporters. His already weakened reputation was further tarnished in 1989, when he became involved in a plagiarism case, when he published under his own name a serious and well-documented guide to the oddities and antiquities of Brittany, the text of which had already been published twenty years before by a different writer through the very same publisher.
Also a source of controversy is his repeated use of the concept of "collective unconscious" as an explanatory tool. This concept was introduced by Carl Jung, but in modern psychology it's rejected by the vast majority of psychologists.
He has published numerous books about Celtic civilisation and the Arthurian cycle. His particular specialties are the place of women in the Celtic world and the Grail cycle.
His many works have dealt with subjects as varied as summations of various myths, the relationships of same with occult subjects like the Templars, Cathars, the Rennes le Château mystery, Atlantis, the megalith building civilisations, druidism and so on, up to and including a biography of Saint Columba.
While Markale presents himself as being very widely read on the subjects about which he writes, he is nonetheless surrounded by controversy regarding the value of his work. Critics allege that his 'creative' use of scholarship and his tendency to make great leaps in reasoning cause those following the more normative (and hence more conservative) mode of scholars to balk. As well as this, his interest in subjects that his critics consider questionable, including various branches of the occult, have gained him at least as many opponents as supporters. His already weakened reputation was further tarnished in 1989, when he became involved in a plagiarism case, when he published under his own name a serious and well-documented guide to the oddities and antiquities of Brittany, the text of which had already been published twenty years before by a different writer through the very same publisher.
Also a source of controversy is his repeated use of the concept of "collective unconscious" as an explanatory tool. This concept was introduced by Carl Jung, but in modern psychology it's rejected by the vast majority of psychologists.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 31, 2022
Très intéressante analyse de l'amour courtois. Analyse des règles et des faits, beaucoup d'exemples.
Auteur issu de son temps (années 80) qui critique la révolution sexuelle et parle parfois un peu de temps de la fonction de la femme comme mère et comme valorisation de l'homme...
La fin qui est partie un peu trop loin pour moi mais qui peut en intéresser d'autres, par exemple comment la Marie mère de dieu est passée d'image anecdotique à pierre angulaire de la chrétienté. Et comment ça nourrit l'image de l'amour courtois...
Auteur issu de son temps (années 80) qui critique la révolution sexuelle et parle parfois un peu de temps de la fonction de la femme comme mère et comme valorisation de l'homme...
La fin qui est partie un peu trop loin pour moi mais qui peut en intéresser d'autres, par exemple comment la Marie mère de dieu est passée d'image anecdotique à pierre angulaire de la chrétienté. Et comment ça nourrit l'image de l'amour courtois...
August 21, 2021
This book took me a while to get through. Not because it wasn't interesting, but because there were only a few chapters and they were long and not broken down into sub-chapters or sections. I much prefer a book that has more segmentation. But that concerns structure, not content.
As for content, courtly love is probably somewhat of a niche and obscure subject to be interested in, considering that it is something that existed mostly in times past and forgotten, in a society and culture that revolved around class segregation between nobles and non-nobles. It hardly seems relevant to modern times.
The author does a good job of exploring the subject and all its interweavings and influences with things such as mythology, paganism, Christianity, etc. It's all very fascinating. There's also a good deal of re-telling of the stories of Lancelot and Guinevere and Tristan and Iseult which did become a bit wearisome. It would probably be better to read these stories first-hand. It was a bit like hearing a movie commentary without ever seeing the movie. Although, I did watch the film "First Knight", with Richard Gere as Lancelot, while in the middle of this book, and even though it's not such a bad movie, by the end of this book I had a very different idea of the characters of Lancelot and Guinevere that I don't think the Hollywood treatment did any justice to.
The book itself was really an intellectual indulgence overall. Interesting perspectives on the connections between courtly love, pagan-goddesses, and the Virgin Mary, I will say.
As for content, courtly love is probably somewhat of a niche and obscure subject to be interested in, considering that it is something that existed mostly in times past and forgotten, in a society and culture that revolved around class segregation between nobles and non-nobles. It hardly seems relevant to modern times.
The author does a good job of exploring the subject and all its interweavings and influences with things such as mythology, paganism, Christianity, etc. It's all very fascinating. There's also a good deal of re-telling of the stories of Lancelot and Guinevere and Tristan and Iseult which did become a bit wearisome. It would probably be better to read these stories first-hand. It was a bit like hearing a movie commentary without ever seeing the movie. Although, I did watch the film "First Knight", with Richard Gere as Lancelot, while in the middle of this book, and even though it's not such a bad movie, by the end of this book I had a very different idea of the characters of Lancelot and Guinevere that I don't think the Hollywood treatment did any justice to.
The book itself was really an intellectual indulgence overall. Interesting perspectives on the connections between courtly love, pagan-goddesses, and the Virgin Mary, I will say.
January 24, 2024
The greatest defect which this book suffers from is the clumsiness of its prose and conceptual development. There are many asides which, if properly developed to fruition and allowed their respective space / chapters, would have better demonstrated the argument being made of the Chanson de Geste and all the musings of the Troubadours as a kind of courtly, aristocratic rebellion against the encroachment of Catholic monasticism in the 12th and 13th centuries. However, the author frantically jumps between discussing Meister Eckhart, the Canon of the Mass, Arthurian legend, Occitan society, Greco-Roman paganism, and the Near Eastern origins of Judaism; so particular sections which may be of interest to you will invariably be violently focused back on Tristan and Iseult, or Lancelot and Guinevere without much ado.
This work is best served as a primary introduction to the idea of how Eros might serve as a communion independent, and arguably superior to whatever institutionalized Rome, Canterbury, or Constantinople may have to offer the chivalric-inclined European man. But as a close study of the religious overtones of the Cathars within the troubadours, specific texts of the Chanson de Geste, or even Arthurian legend, this work is too erratic to be of much use. The greatest irony of the book is that for being published by Inner Traditions, most well-known for carrying virtually all of Evola's works, there's very little methodological similarity between this work and his "Eros and the Mysteries of Love."
This work is best served as a primary introduction to the idea of how Eros might serve as a communion independent, and arguably superior to whatever institutionalized Rome, Canterbury, or Constantinople may have to offer the chivalric-inclined European man. But as a close study of the religious overtones of the Cathars within the troubadours, specific texts of the Chanson de Geste, or even Arthurian legend, this work is too erratic to be of much use. The greatest irony of the book is that for being published by Inner Traditions, most well-known for carrying virtually all of Evola's works, there's very little methodological similarity between this work and his "Eros and the Mysteries of Love."
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews