Joey Stone
Heiple, Daniel L.
“The ‘Accidens Amoris’ in Lyric Poetry.” Neophilologus
67 (1983): 55-64.
This article
presents an explanation for how descriptions of the mental and physical effects
of love may have entered into the world of lyric poetry.
Most of the medieval physicians who wrote treatises on love and its
effects were educated at
I think this article provides some interesting information about less popular views of love in the Middle Ages. In the other articles I have read love is generally described as a sickness. Here it is described as an accident, or the effect of a secondary change. Heiple uses examples of poetic vocabulary to show the relationship between poetry and medicine. He also uses them to show that the poets, while calling love a sickness, were actually describing it as an accident- by definition. This is definitely a different view than any put forward in the other articles I have read.
Wack, Mary F.
“Imagination, Medicine, and Rhetoric in Andreas Capellanus’ ‘De
Amore’.” Magister Regis, Studies in
Honor of Robert Earl Kaske.
“Imagination” is a two-sectioned study on Andreas Capellanus and his view of human imagination. He saw it as a way to integrate two striking phenomena of twelfth-century love literature- erotic desire and rhetorical inventiveness (2). Wack uses section one to bring out evidence from Capellanus’ works to show that his understanding of imagination was based on Salernitan psychology (used in a broad sense to refer to translations made in Italy in the eleventh century and to the writings those translations stimulated directly (2)). She states that the strongest evidence most likely lies in his quotation of Johannitius:
“. . .sleep is a resting of the animal powers
accompanied by a strengthening of the natural powers; therefore, deprivation of
sleep is a fatiguing of the mind with a weakening of the body.” (4)
Section two is focused on the product of desire- eloquence.
Eloquence, having its roots in “imagination’s unsatisfied desire,”
(10) is a man’s way of striving for the forbidden or unattainable.
Wack pieces together sections of rhetorical lovers’ dialogue from works
by Capellanus to show this.
Though second alphabetically, this was actually the last article I read and wrote on for this bibliography. I must say, though I have never thought of love sickness and rhetoric in this context, Capellanus’ ideas on the matter make so much sense that it frightens me. The way he has based his ideas on the interaction between two of the most basic human qualities, desire and imagination, and put them in logical order reminds me of the scientific principle known as ‘Ockham’s Razor.’ Simply put, Ockham’s Razor states that “all things being equal, the simplest solution is the correct one” (www.phyun5.ucr.edu). Wack has done a nice job bringing a new possibility to my table on the cause of love sickness and its inevitable influence on eloquence and rhetoric.
Wack, Mary F.
“New Medieval Medical Texts on Amor Hereos.” Zusammenhänge, Einflüsse, Wirkungen.
This study is focused primarily on the core differences
between three unpublished texts on love sickness.
The texts are: Questiones super Viaticum of Peter of Spain,
composed around 1250 (1); Determinatio de amore hereos of Gerard de Solo,
produced sometime after 1335 (1); and the mysterious Bona Fortuna’s Tractatus
super Viaticum, written perhaps sometime in the first part of the fourteenth
century (1). Until the time this
article was published, these texts had not been included in the sampling of
medieval medical writing used to engage the question of love sickness.
Questiones encompasses sexuality and physiology as well as
treatments for specific diagnostic and therapeutic problems associated with amor
hereos. The fundamental problem
of the work centers on the area of the body affected by love sickness.
Determinatio, however, states that love is not a sickness at all
but rather a series of actions and habits with some physiological effects.
This is in direct contrast to most medieval medical views.
Last, Tractatus is nothing more than a medical manual dealing with
Love sickness. It covers causes,
symptoms, and cures in a purely medical sense.
It also deals with experimentation, but only in a sketchy, theoretical
way. The work concludes with some
thoughts from the author. Wack
reminds the reader that medieval medicine revolved around practica as
well as theorica, in order to keep our modern views separate from our
opinions of the works and ideas she has outlined.
This is a very interesting article by Mary Wack. It presents three unpublished texts basically overlooked until the time this study was written. Each one has its own distinct point of view on the causes, the affects, the actual definition, and even the very reality or fallacy of love sickness. Wack compares and contrasts these points of view, using not only ideas from the authors but also public views from the time. She pulls everything together nicely at the end by reminding us that while we should keep our modern views separate from our conception of medieval love, we should also accept the fact that medieval ideas could enhance our own and open doors for our understanding and overall enjoyment.
Wack, Mary F. “The Liber de Heros Morbo of Johannes Afflacius and its Implications for Medieval Love Conventions.” Speculum 62.2 (1987): 324-344.
This article by Mary Wack deals with the relationship
between love sickness in a medical sense and love sickness in a literary sense.
It is divided into two sections. The
first is a translation of the Liber de Heros Morbo, a brief medical text
on love sickness. It is a translated
(probably by Johannes Afflacius, a student of
Do not be fooled by the length of this study. While 20 pages long, it is divided into two distinct sections, neither of which are of incredible substance. Section one, the translation, does provide good primary documentation for a research paper but nothing more. In section two, Wack displays some good ideas about the influence of the Liber de Heros Morbo on the conceived notion of love in the Middle Ages, but the section is really too short to develop a strong argument. Wack herself even admits that the piece probably lacked a bit in circulation and popularity.
Wack, Mary F.
“The Measure of Pleasure: Peter of
Keeping precedence, this is yet another article by Mary
Wack that is distinctly divided into a number of sections.
In this study, based largely on the gender writings of Peter of Spain,
there are four; each with its own contribution.
The first outlines literary, natural philosophical, and medical ideas on
women and love sickness to place [Peter’s] work in its contemporary context
(2). Wack gives what she calls
‘limited evidence’ (3) to argue Peter’s view that men and women were
affected equally by love sickness. It
is not gender-discriminate, but affects men to a higher degree.
The Second section revolves around men, women, and amor hereos;
with particular attention to the language of measurement (2).
It outlines three of Peter’s ideas.
The first is that noblemen suffer more from love sickness.
The second and third compare the vulnerability of men and women to the
sickness; the third using the language of measurement to compare sexual
pleasure. Section three is an
overview of later writers who adopted and expanded Peter of Spain’s analysis
of sexual pleasure. The idea of
greater masculine pleasure influenced writers such as Albert the Great and
Pierre de Saint-Flour. Last, section
four is Wack’s tentative hypothesis concerning Peter’s influence on later
medical writers who viewed women as primary patients of love sickness (2).
This section is an exploration of the connection between his ideas and
similar ones expressed in later texts.
This article was the perfect ending piece for this bibliography. While the context and circumstances under which it was written are hard to determine, it definitely brings out a fresh thought on the topic of love sickness. Now, we have a writer that deals with women and how it affects them. Until this study, all the others seemed to state that love sickness was nothing more than a masculine disorder. Peter of Spain took it one more step. He claimed it affects men more than women (on an intensity, not percentage) basis, but nonetheless it is also a feminine condition. Wack does well in this article of not only expressing, but organizing her thoughts and making what could have turned out to be a very long, tedious work into one that flowed well and kept interest.