The Game of Love:

Depictions of Courtly Love in English Illuminated Manuscripts of the 14th Century

Abstract

The main goal in this paper concerns the images of Courtly Love from English Illuminated Manuscripts made in the 14^thcentury. These manuscripts, being connected intimately with the English nobility and knighthood, reflected their interests and worries in their programs of illumination. Through those images, with the guidance of Jean Claude-Schmitt’s (2007) work on their specificities in the medieval context, we mean to study other ways of depicting the relations between man and woman and its cultural aspect, in a different medieval than the chivalric romances and literature, where such themes were popularized. We looked for two different iconographic themes: the Siege to the Castle of Love and the Game played between damsel and knight, both relevant to the understanding of the images on the relations between man and woman in this context.