Amazon.com description: Product Description: The Arrow of Love examines visual encounters in medieval lyrics, exploring the ways in which poets employed contemporary optical theory both to revitalize classical topoi, such as Cupid's arrow, and to address issues of subjectivity and gender. In the unconfessed or unrequited love that is so frequently the focus of medieval lyrics, an exchange of glances is often the primary contact between the lover and the beloved. As medieval poets sought new ways to describe visual interactions, many turned to the rapidly growing field of optical theory, which offered not only an array of images and metaphors but also models for the perceiving subject that could be adapted to poetic use. In particular, optical imagery and paradigms afforded poets a new approach to the roles of the languishing male lover and his powerful beloved. Poets considered include Chretien de Troyes, Giacomo da Lentini, Guido Cavalcanti, and Dante. Medieval transformations of imagery involving the eyes persisted in literature for centuries; the epilogue considers the fate Of these transformations in Renaissance poetry.