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CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS The Metaphysics Of Love : Studies In Renaissance Love Poetry From Dante To Milton by Albert James Smith
This book is an important study of European love poetry from Dante to Milton. It contrasts some of the ways whereby major Renaissance poets express a conflict between sensual love and spiritual love. For these poets love arouses metaphysical disquiet, throwing into relief the frailties and contradictions of human nature. The argument grows out of a close comparison of passages in Dantes Divina Comedia, and Miltons Paradise Lost. The extensive survey of conceptions of sacred and secular love is the basis for studies of other major texts: Petrarchs I Trionfi, Michelangelos love poems, Spensers The Faerie Queene, Shakespeares Sonnets, Donnes love poetry and prose writings, Caroline lyrics, Vaughans Silex Scintillans, and Miltons Paradise Regained. Though presenting a wide-ranging account of the evolution of ideas of love from the twelfth to the seventeenth century, the book is essentially concerned with the way in which contrasting attitudes are experienced and proved in the poetry, and contribute to each poets distinctive understanding of love.show more