Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>This book, which is underpinned by a database of all the rhymes in c.925 Petrarchan or ‘courtly love’ lyrics, demonstrates that rhyme fundamentally determines and structures subject matter. It focuses on the relationship between rhyme and the conception of love in courtly lyrics between 1300 and 1579, spanning the periods traditionally divided into ‘medieval’ and ‘early modern’. Concentrating on the rhyme-groups surrounding the words ‘pain’, ‘woe’, and ‘heart’, it argues that the limited rhyme-resources of English render certain clusters of words and ideas almost inevitable, particularly in forms like the ballade and the roundel, which are hungry for very large rhyme-groups. The result is that groups of ideas which are linked by the essentially arbitrary element of rhyme come to determine the characteristics of love in poetry, while the impression of subjectivity emerges as a side-effect of rhyme’s requirements. Each of the central chapters focuses on a single word and identifies the words which rhyme with it, grouping them into thematic clusters. Each thematic cluster is then analysed through close reading of poems. Towards the end of each chapter, there is a comparison between several poems in English which use the chapter’s eponymous rhyme-word with their French or Italian sources, showing how the different rhyme-resources available in different languages nudge the content of the target poem apart from its source. Each chapter concludes by placing its findings in the context of external changes in scientific or cultural attitudes to the subject of the chapter between 1300 and 1579.</jats:p>