Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002
Includes bibliographical references (pages 267-281) and indexes
The discourse of love's labor and its cultural contexts -- Labor omnia vincit: Roman attitudes toward work and leisure and the discourse of love's labor in Ovid's Ars amatoria -- Noble servitium: aspects of labor ideology in the Christian middle ages and love's labor in the De amore of Andreas Capellanus -- Homo artifex: monastic labor ideologies, urban labor, and love's labor in Alan of Lille's De planctu naturae -- Repose travaillant: the discourse of love's labor in the Roman de la rose -- The vice of Acedia and the gentil occupacion in Gower's Confessio amantis -- Love's bysynesse in Chaucer's amatory fiction
"Inspired by the critical theories of M.M. Bakhtin, Idleness Working is a groundbreaking study of key works in the Western literature of love from Classical Rome to the late Middle Ages. The study focuses on the evolution of the ideologically-saturated discourse of love's labor contained in these works and thus explores them in context of ancient and medieval theories of labor and leisure, which themselves are seen to evolve through the course of Western history. What emerges from this study is a fresh appreciation and deepened understanding of such well-known classics of love literature as Ovid's Ars amatoria, Andreas Capellanus' De amore, Alan of Lille's Complaint of Nature, Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun's Roman de la rose. John Gower's Confessio Amantis, and Geoffrey Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde."--Jacket
