Flora Unveiled

288 i Flora Unveiled

He goes on to liken the aftermath of a storm to reconciliation after a lovers’ quarrel:

Our love affair moves on

Like a flowering hawthorne branch

Standing above a trembling tree ...

At night, only rain and frost;

But the next day’s sunshine gleams

Through green branches and leaves.

I still remember that morning

When we pledged an end to our war,

And she gave me that great gift—

Her loving and her ring:

Having won his lady’s heart, William’s tone abruptly switches to locker- room
braggadocio:

Oh, God, let me live long enough

To grope beneath her cloak! ...

Let other gabbers brag about their love.

We’ve got the meat and the knife.

The God to whom William prays, however, is clearly not the Christian God of the medi-
eval church. In his poem “Very Happily I Begin to Love,” William’s description of his lady
combines Venus’s power of love with the miraculous healing powers of Mary:

Every joy must lower itself

and all royalty obey

my lady, because of her kindness

and of her sweet pleasant visage;

and he will live a hundred times longer

who can partake of her love.

Because of her joy can the sick turn healthy

and because of her displeasure can a healthy man die

and a wise man turn mad ...

The juxtaposition of erotic and spiritual elements characterizes much of the literature of
courtly love and distinguishes it from classical love poetry.

Capellanus’s Treatise on Love and

the Courtly Love Tradition

The term “courtly love” was coined in 1883 by the French medieval scholar Gaston Paris to
describe the particular kind of love depicted in the poem “Lancelot” by Chrétien de Troyes
and in other medieval romances. Such romances typically involved situations in which the