Università Roma Tre

Eros, fin’amors and poetry in medieval Romance culture
One of the most important features of medieval European civilization (Provence, North-France, Italy, Spain, Portugal) is the emergence of an erotic ideology that immediately generates peculiar forms of thinking and acting: the cortesia expresses a new social code. Therefore also new forms of literary creation emerge: the provençal poetry and the ideology of fin'amors soon extend to all Europe, through the works of the most important troubadours, and influence the German poetry of the Minnesänger and the Sicilian poets at the Frederick II’s court.
The evolution of eros into fin'amors, of the natural impulse which was mithicised and even deified in the ancient Greek and Roman civilization, into a fundamental cultural theme brings along a profound transformation of poetry and literature in all Europe.

D. de Rougemont, L'Amore e l’Occidente (1939), Milano 1998;
E. Köhler, Sociologia della fin'amor: saggi trobadorici, Padova 1987;
M. Mancini, Metafora feudale, Bologna 1993.