Love and Marriage in the Age of Chaucer

Spicing erudition with wit, Professor Kelly takes a new look at medieval attitudes toward love, sexuality, and marriage, and he corrects a number of long-standing misconceptions embodied in the concept of courtly love.Through a close examination of canon law, the common practice of clandestine marriage, writings on mysticism, and medieval poetry - particularly Gower's 'Confessio amantis' and Chaucer's romances and their sources - he concludes that medieval lovers favored matrimony and did not co