Dronke, Peter.
Oxford University Press (Clarendon Press), 1999 (reprint of 1968 edition).
Book Number 20953
A poetic interpretation rather than a history of medieval lyrical love-poetry, this one-volume edition of the original two-volume edition of Peter Dronke's book illuminates certain modes of thought in medieval poetry, and certain kinds of language, particularly that of courtly love. Dronke investigates the beginnings of vernacular love poetry in Europe, and explores its relation to the Latin poetry of the time and to the world of ideas that Latin made accessible. These issues are explored in Volume I, while Volume II presents the texts of a large number of medieval Latin love poems, the majority of them hitherto unpublished, with prose translations by Dronke. The work was first published in 1965-6, and revised for the second edition in 1968, with a new Preface clarifying the author's notion of "the courtly experience" in Volume I, and with revisions to the texts and translations of Volume II based on a fresh examination of the manuscript evidence.