The Book of The Love-Smitten Heart

Rene D'Anjou, Kathryn Karczenska, Stephanie Gibbs

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136543876
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

Available only in Middle French and German translation until now, this volume constitutes the first full-length, French-English bilingual edition of Rene of Anjou's Livre du cuers d'amours espris, including all sixteen of the celebrated color plates, a critical introduction, notes on the translation, and a comprehensive bibliography.
The book tells the tale of desire and adventure as Heart -- part of Rene torn from his body by Love -- travels a complex allegorical landscape in quest of the lady Mercy, who is being held prisoner by a band of miscreants led by Refusal and Shame. Rene begs the reader to help him determine which of three entities is responsible for his torment: Fortune led him to the lady whom he loves; once he arrived, Love, in the guise of his lady's gaze, struck his heart; and Destiny insists that he reflect upon her alone. In addition to being a compelling courtly page-turner, The Book of the Love-Smitten Heart represents the rare instance in which a medieval love story is told simultaneously in three frameworks: autobiographical letter, dream vision, and quest romance. This structure makes clear the multiple logics within which the author's psychology is reflected in the story, and illustrates how the symbol of the heart, as it travels through these shifting frameworks, dramatizes vital relations linking self, desire, and writing.

Notes

Notes to The Book of the Love-Smitten Heart

1. This is John II, duke of Bourbon (1426–1488), husband of René’s niece Joan of France, and brother of Marie of Bourbon, René’s daughter-in-law by John of Calabria.
2. Souci means both marigold and worry, a conscious play on words.
3. Columbine flowers were considered symbols of melancholy.
4. A validire is a page charged with conveying messages, making this fish a messenger. We have rendered it as an untranslated foreign term since it functions as such in the story.
5. Gifts.
6. Senatus populusque Romanus: “The Roman senate and people.”
7. “The scourge of God.”
8. The identity of the woman here is unknown.
9. Faustina was the licentious wife of Marcus Aurelius.
10. The winged stag would have been easily recognizable to René’s contemporaries as the arms of Charles VII of France (1422–1461), René’s brother-in-law by his sister Marie. See introduction.
11. Creusa was Aeneas’s wife, whom he lost in the crowd fleeing Troy.
12. Polyxena was the daughter of King Priam and Achilles’s wife.
13. This must be a distortion of Deianeira, the name of Hercules’s wife in Greek and Roman mythology.
14. Ponthus and Sidonie are characters in a late-fourteenth-century French prose romance of the same name; Ponthus is the son of the prince of Galicia who falls in love with Sidonie, daughter of the king of Brittany.
15. The identities of Arthur and Joan here are unknown.
16. This is Louis of Orléans (1371–1407), grandson of John II the Good of France (René’s great-grandfather), and father of René’s cousin Charles of Orléans.
17. This is John, duke of Berry (1340–1416), who between 1360 and 1369 was held hostage by England for his father, King John the Good of France. The woman in question was named Oursine, hence the conjunction of ours and cygne in John’s arms (Winkler 195).
18. This is Louis II duke of Bourbon (1337–1410), who with John of Berry was held hostage in England for John the Good of France. Louis is the great-grandfather of John of Bourbon, to whom René addresses his work, and of Marie of Bourbon, René’s daughter-in-law by John o...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Literary Achievement
• Literary Tradition
• Editorial and Translation Principles
• Notes
• Select Bibliography
• Le Livre du cuers d’amours espris
• Notes
• The Book of the Love-Smitten Heart
• Notes