The Arts of Friendship: The Idealization of Friendship in Medieval and Early Renaissance Literature: 50 (Brill's Studies in Intellectual History, 50) - Hardcover

Hyatte, Reginald

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 9004100180 ISBN 13: 9789004100183

Publisher: Brill, 1994

Synopsis

The Arts of Friendship focusses on literary representations of three categories of ideal friendship ― Christian, chivalric, and humanistic ― and the writers' strategies of establishing the ethical authority of their contemporary friends and codes on a par with antiquity's amicitia perfecta. The study identifies the extent to which writers acknowledged women as perfect friends.
The selected texts under examination include, among others, hagiographies, works of Bernard of Clairvaux and Aelred of Rievaulx, The Quest of the Holy Grail, Thomas' Tristan, the Prose Lancelot, Ami and Amile, the Decameron, and L.B. Alberti's Dell'amicizia.
Literary comparatists and historians, ethical historians, and students of rhetoric will find of interest the comparative study of the rhetorical topos of perfect friendship, the varied ethical criteria inherent there, and the writers' strategies for representing and authorizing an idea.

About this title

About the Author

Reginald Hyatte, Ph.D. (1971) in Romance Languages, the University of Pennsylvania, is Associate Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of Tulsa. He published previously Laughter for the Devil: The Trials of Gilles de Rais and L'Harmonie des sphères.

Edition details

• Publisher: Brill
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 9004100180
• ISBN 13: 9789004100183
• Binding: Leather Bound
• Number of pages: 260