Eroticism and Love in the Middle Ages by Albrecht Classen

Eroticism and Love in the Middle Ages Reviews

• 
  Mark

  A textbook, be warned, but an excellent warehousing of erotic ballads, poems, tales and songs from the early days of romance. All the familiar hallmarks of modern romance are here in slightly alien and archaic form: delayed and interrupted lust, true love barred by insurmountable obstacles, religious heresy, defiance of family and community for the sake of a lover. Here's a lovely, late 12th century example of the verse in this collection, from Walther von der Vogelweide:
  
  Under the lime tree
  
  Under the lime tree
  On the heather,
  Where we had shared a place of rest,
  Still you may find there,
  Lovely together,
  Flowers crushed and grass down-pressed.
  Beside the forest in the vale,
  Tándaradéi,
  Sweetly sang the nightingale.
  
  I came to meet him
  At the green:
  There was my truelove come before.
  Such was I greeted —
  Heaven's Queen! —
  That I am glad for evermore.
  Had he kisses? A thousand some:
  Tándaradéi,
  See how red my mouth's become.
  
  There he had fashioned
  For luxury
  A bed from every kind of flower.
  It sets to laughing
  Delightedly
  Whoever comes upon that bower;
  By the roses well one may,
  Tándaradéi,
  Mark the spot my head once lay.
  
  If any knew
  He lay with me
  (May God forbid!), for shame I'd die.
  What did he do?
  May none but he
  Ever be sure of that — and I,
  And one extremely tiny bird,
  Tándaradéi,
  Who will, I think, not say a word.