The Loving Subject: Desire, Eloquence, and Power in Romanesque France (Anniversary Collection) - Hardcover

Bond, Gerald A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0812233220 ISBN 13: 9780812233223

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press Anniversary Collection, 1995

Synopsis

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.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

In The Loving Subject, 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 while 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. 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.

About the Author:

Gerald A. Bond is Emeritus Professor of French and German at the University of Rochester.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press Anniversary Collection
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0812233220
• ISBN 13: 9780812233223
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 296