The Middle English Castle of Love and Robert Grosseteste's Anglo-Norman Original, Le chasteau d'amour

This new edition of the Middle English Castle of Love pairs this fourteenth-century poem with its Anglo-Norman source: Le châsteau d’amour, written by English philosopher and theologian Robert Grosseteste in the early thirteenth century. Grosseteste’s poem begins with an influential interpretation of the allegory of the Four Daughters of God before deploying another allegory: that of the Virgin Mary as the Castle of Love protecting the Incarnation of Jesus. These twinned allegories drive the poem’s central theme of salvation history as Jesus, recast as the king’s son, volunteers to trade places with the castle’s prisoner, the biblical forefather Adam, imprisoned by original sin. Described by historian R. W. Southern as “the most complete outline of Grosseteste’s theology” available, the Castle of Love also showcases Grosseteste’s talents for biblical allusion, architectural imagery, romance motifs, and knowledge of feudal structures and legal principles, all marshaled in service of this striking work.