value. Though some social practices acceptable during the Middle Ages may be reflected in Capellanus' work, it cannot be clearly demonstrated to be a reliable source on the common medieval attitude to "courtly love." Sidelights De Amore gives a listing of the stages of love, which resembles in some ways the modern baseball euphemism: "Throughout all the ages, there have been only four degrees [gradus] in love: "The first consists in arousing hope; "The second in offering kisses; "The third in the enjoyment of intimate embraces; "The fourth in the abandonment of the entire person." Courtly love is reserved for the middle and upper classes in De Amore. Attractive peasant girls are to be shunned or, failing this, "embraced by force": "If you should, by some chance, fall in love with a peasant woman, be careful to puff her up with lots of praise and then, when you find a convenient opportunity, do not hold back but take your pleasure and embrace her by force. For you can hardly soften their outward inflexibility so far that they will grant you their embraces quietly or permit you to have the solaces you desire unless you first use a little compulsion as a convenient cure for their shyness. We do not say these things, however, because we want to persuade you to love such women, but only so that, if through lack of caution you should be driven to love them, you may know, in brief compass, what to do." (Parry, p. 150, adapted). In a similar vein, Andreas describes nuns as easy to seduce, although he condemns anyone who does so as a "disgusting animal." Notes References 1. Brian Wilkie and James Hurt, eds. Literature of the Western World. Vol. 1 5th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2001. 2. Kathleen Andersen-Wyman: Andreas Capellanus on Love? New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. 3. Andreas Capellanus: The Art of Courtly Love included in The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, Vol. 1 Edited by Joseph Black, et al. Toronto: Broadview Press, 2006 4. F.X. Newman, ed.: The Meaning of Courtly Love. Albany: The Research Foundation of State University of New York, 1968. 5. Donald K. Frank: Naturalism and the troubadour ethic. New York: Lang, 1988. (American university studies: Ser. 19; 10) 6. Gregory M. Sadlek: Idleness working: the discourse of love's labor from Ovid through Chaucer and Gower. Washington, DC: Catholic Univ. of