How chivalric charmers reinvented Valentine's Day

Love is in the air. Well, a commercialized version of love anyway. One that will, in my case at least, result in spousal disappointment over a failure to buy gifts and book restaurants. It was better when I was single. Then, the only thing I had to contend with on Feb. 14 was the all-consuming dread of being alone.

But it needn’t be this way. When a couple of medieval poets first decided that St. Valentine’s Day would come to stand for all things lovey-dovey, they had loftier things in mind than chocolates and cards. As Jennifer Wollock, professor of literature at Texas A&M, explains, chivalric charmers Geoffrey Chaucer and Oton III de Granson reinvented the day to stand for romantic ideals: the freedom to choose one’s own true love or to reject the advances of unwanted suitors. It was a refreshingly romantic notion in an age when forced and loveless marriages were all too common.

This week we also liked articles about polyamory during the COVID-19 pandemic, people who don’t mind being single and why UMass Amherst is mobilizing a “vaccine corps.”