FREN 4050 - The Art of Love

(crosslisted) COML 4007, MEDVL 4050
(LA-AS)

Fall. 4 credits. Student option grading.

Co-meets with COML 6007/FREN 6050/MEDVL 6050.

C. Howie.

Is love an art? Then it requires knowledge and effort, writes Erich Fromm in the first chapter of The Art of Loving. His question (from 1956) is not a new one. This course engages with the long tradition of thinking about love as an art, not merely something one falls into or out of, but something one does or fails to do. We’ll start with Plato’s Phaedrus and Ovid’s ironic Art of Love before proceeding to three great medieval depictions of love: Andreas Capellanus’ On Love, Bernard of Clairvaux’s On Loving God, and Chrétien de Troyes’ Lancelot. We’ll also look at some of the more provacative modern arts of love, from Fromm to Foucault, Barthes to Gillian Rose.