Love and Virtue in Middle English and Middle Scots Poetry

The book provides the first comprehensive study of love and ethics in Middle English and Middle Scots poems written at the close of the Middle Ages by Geoffrey Chaucer, James I, Robert Henryson, William Dunbar, and Gavin Douglas. It shows that medieval poems often reveal a pattern in which an individual moves from selfish to selfless concerns, and how this movement is incited by love, while fulfilled through virtue. By taking into account the English and Scottish cultural contexts, as well as other traditions of writing, the book shows how the ideas on human well-being were disseminated and adjusted to meet cultural changes. In this, the book contributes to a discussion on what constitutes “mindful” or “virtuous” living, a discussion that is as relevant today as it was in the Middle Ages.