ABSTRACT

Friendship and Rhetoric in the Middle Ages: The Linguistic Performance of Intimacy from Cicero to Aelred covers approximately 1,200 years of literature. This is a book on "medieval literature" that foregrounds language as the agent for cultivating medieval friendship (from the first century BC to c. 1160 AD) in oratorical, ecclesiastical, monastic, and erotic contexts. Taking a different approach than many works in this area, which search for the lived experience of friends behind language, this book stands apart in looking at friendship's enactment through rhetorical language among classical and medieval authors.

chapter |12 pages

Introduction

chapter 2|23 pages

Early Christian Friendship

Tradition and Innovation in the Fourth Century

chapter 3|23 pages

Making Love in Language

Friendship in the Carolingian Era

chapter 4|32 pages

The Drama of the Saints

Friendship in the Prayers and Letters of Anselm of Canterbury

chapter 7|30 pages

“The Effort itself Is Great”

Performance, Sympathy, and Authority in Aelred of Rievaulx’s De spiritali amicitia

chapter |2 pages

Conclusion