Review:Medieval Love Poetry

Medieval Love Poetry
edited by John Cherry

I picked this up from the New shelf at the library on the suggestion of Goldilocks, who likes love poetry. It is small and thin and not as bright as this picture seems.

I think the idea for this book must have started with wanting to display artifacts based on Medieval love poetry because half the book is pictures of brooches, paintings and ivory carvings. The poetry part consists of a summary of the poem depicted, then small excerpts of the actual poem. In the back there is a reference to the books that each of the poems comes from, like The Knight's Tale in The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

I enjoyed the inscriptions of the jewelry. "I am the brooch to guard the breast so that no churl may put his hand here." And I enjoyed the ivory carvings. Beautiful workmanship! And now I will be hunting down some of these poems if they are not on my poetry list that I'm working through. The Canterbury Tales is on my list but Troilus and Criseyde, also by Chaucer, is not so I will have to include it for myself.

Amor Vincit Omnia
(love conquers all)