리샤르 드 푸르니발의 『사랑의 동물지』에 나타난 ‘사랑’의 의미

Abstract

In the middle of the thirteenth century, Richard de Fournival’s Bestiaire d’amour(Bestiary of love) transformed the symbolic meanings of animals in an interesting and ingenious way by combining the two genres of ‘Roman(courtly love literature)’ and ‘Bestiary’ that were popular at the time. Unlike ordinary Bestiary which draw religious and moral teachings from the characteristics of animals, Bestiaire d’amour translated into allegories under the theme of love between men and women. In this respect, the appearance of Bestiaire d’amour seems to have been a transformation from ‘the sacred’ to ‘the profane’, that is to say, a shift from the religious mentality to the secular mentality. However, from the point of view intellectual tradition and culture in the 13th century, in Bestiaire d’amour the religious sensibilities and thoughts of ‘desire for God’ are more clearly found rather than such secular sensitivities. The greatest characteristic of the concept of “love” is that it can be used in a wide variety of contexts in any age or society, and it can be used as symbols. In Christianity, which has emphasized love as the best virtue and “religion of love”, such tendency became more prominent. Thus if we look at Bestiaire d’amour through Christian tradition that expresses the spiritual union with God as a relationship between man and woman and marriage, the meaning of love in Bestiaire d’amour is interpreted quite differently. “Love”, “Memory”, “Sensation”, “Moderation and Devotion”, that are being used by the Bestiaire d’amour, are key concepts of medieval mystical theology based on St. Augustine's thought. Therefore, if we summarize the whole contents of Bestiaire d’amour centered on these concepts, it is confirmed that the contents are composed mainly of the logical structure of medieval mystical theology “Memory”-“Sensation”-“Moderation and Devotion”-“Grace of God”. In this sense, if ordinary Bestiary reflects the theological tradition and the Neoplatonic cosmology and nature view to seek and meditate on the providence of God embedded in nature, Bestiaire d’amour can be interpreted as a work that uses the natures of animals for inner and subjective theology of mystical theology and widen its scope. Moreover, in Bestiaire d’amour, we can see that the mystical religious desire and the secular physical desire coexist and symbolically unite in one style. And this dual symbolism is an important attribute that constitutes the uniqueness of medieval culture.