Love Opening

Love is a force more formidable than any other. It is invisible - it cannot be seen or measured, yet it is powerful enough to transform you in a... more

by Kathy Bassett

Title

Love Opening

Artist

Kathy Bassett

Medium

Photograph - Photography - Photo Painting - Digital Art

Description

Love is a force more formidable than any other. It is invisible - it cannot be seen or measured, yet it is powerful enough to transform you in a moment, and offer you more joy than any material possession could.
I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.
For this was on Saint Valentine's Day, when every bird cometh there to choose his mate.....This poem was written to honor the first anniversary of the engagement of King Richard II of England to Anne of Bohemia. A treaty providing for a marriage was signed on May 2, 1381. (When they were married eight months later, they were each only 15 years old).Readers have uncritically assumed that Chaucer was referring to February 14 as Valentine's Day; however, mid-February is an unlikely time for birds to be mating in England. Henry Ansgar Kelly has pointed out that Chaucer could be referring to May 3, the celebration in the liturgical calendar of Valentine of Genoa, an early bishop of Genoa who died around AD 307. Jack B. Oruch says that date for the start of Spring has changed since Chaucer's time because of the precession of equinoxes and the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in 1582. The weather would correspond to the modern February, a time when some birds have started mating and nesting in England.Chaucer's Parliament of Foules is set in a fictional context of an old tradition, but in fact there was no such tradition before Chaucer. The speculative explanation of sentimental customs, posing as historical fact, had their origins among 18th-century antiquaries, notably Alban Butler, the author of Butler's Lives of Saints, and have been perpetuated even by respectable modern scholars. Most notably, "the idea that Valentine's Day customs perpetuated those of the Roman Lupercalia has been accepted uncritically and repeated, in various forms, up to the present".
There were three other authors who made poems about birds mating in Saint Valentine's Day around the same years: Otton de Grandson from Savoy, John Gower from England, and a knight called Pardo from Valencia. Chaucer most probably predated all of them, but, due to the difficulty of dating medieval works, we can't know for sure who of the four had the idea first and influenced the others.Medieval period and the English Renaissance[edit]
Using the language of the law courts for the rituals of courtly love, a "High Court of Love" was probably established by princess Isabel of Bavaria in Paris in 1400. It was founded on 6 January, the festivity of a Bavarian Saint Valentin, with The Charter of the Court of Love. The court dealt with love contracts, betrayals, and violence against women. Judges were selected by women on the basis of a poetry reading.

Uploaded

January 24th, 2015