The gender debate as experiment and performance in response to a global crisis, with an emphasis on Andreas Capellanus, the anonymous Mauritius von Craûn, and Ulrich von Liechtenstein’s Frauenbuch. Or: the discovery of love and its discourse in the High and Late Middle Ages

Abstract

When medieval poets began to reflect on love, it was, from the beginning, a highly complex and problematic phenomenon, mostly determined by frustration, contradictions, and a lack of fulfilment. Highlighting particularly two major texts, one in Latin, the other in Middle High German, this paper brings to light the critically important element of discourse as part of the public performance of theoretical and practical reflections of love in the Middle Ages. Since courtly love thus has to be defined as a literary medium for courtly debates about its own identity, it makes perfect sense that we hardly ever hear about actual individual satisfaction and the realisation of erotic dreams. Instead, the overarching intention by medieval poets was to problematise the issue of love and to present its paradoxes, difficulties, and conflicts through the literary performance, not to present a maudlin, sentimental story with a simple happy end. As we realise here, the debate about proper attitudes towards the other gender, the analysis of values and virtues all contribute to the realisation of the discourse itself.