Special Studies in Medieval Literature: Love without Object: Mysticism and Desire

We don't know what we love when we love God, says Augustine. But do we really know what we love when we love anything? This course examines the discursive constructions of the love object from antiquity to now, dwelling on some important medieval texts, from the troubadours to "courtly love" poems. We look to medieval negative theology and queer and trans theory for critiques of--and ways of thinking beyond--the (hetero)normativity of the love object in the Aristotelian and Lacanian traditions in particular--the one entangled in the configuration of medieval love, the other in medieval scholarship on love.