Attitudes Toward Love in French literature

Throughout the centuries, literature has provided a way to express oneself, while at the same time, allowing the reader to experience a different kind of life through the stories. As a creation of humans, literature tends to reflect the ideals and thoughts of its writer, while also providing a glimpse into the society, in which the writer penned the story. Perhaps one of the greatest and most intriguing human emotions is love and this theme is present in literature from its beginning to the present day. However, as people and societies changed and evolved, so did the attitudes toward love change with the times. In Medieval French Literature, love is often portrayed as an unreachable emotion and is associated with challenges and suffering, reflecting a society, in which arranged marriages were common and based on title and wealth instead of love. This view of love changes in the French Renaissance, where the focus shifts to material and physical pleasures, reflecting a society, that is ready to change the old values and create something new and rendered to the individual.

The Medieval Period in France lasted seven centuries and encompassed a society with very strict rules. Marriage oftentimes was based on wealth, while love was considered a fleeting emotion that could not be a basis of life. In stories, such as The Lay of the Nightingale, Marie de France, the writer, gives a glimpse into an unhappy marriage, in which the lady had to marry an older lord, even though she was in love with another knight and yearned to be with him. Their love, symbolized by the nightingale, is controlled and eventually killed by her husband, who uncovers her feelings. Yet even in their unhappiness, both the lady and the knight pledge to endure their ...

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...se he was kept away from his love.

At the very end of the century, Michel de Montaigne describes a far-away civilization, to which he compares French society in his essay titled “Of Cannibals”. While not necessarily focusing on the question of love, he does point out the two values of this Indian society: “valor against the enemy and love for their wives”, who in turn, keep their husbands happy. This importance of love between the husband and his wives in this distant society and the fact that Montaigne admired their lifestyle and wanted France to imitate it, show that love has become increasingly necessary in life and marriage. Love is no longer unattainable or restricted by rules of social standing as seen in Medieval Literature. In the Renaissance, it is increasingly part of life, reflecting a more unrestricted society, in which love makes life worth living for.