C. Stephen Jaeger

C. Stephen Jaeger is a scholar of medieval German and Latin literature whose work examines education, courtly conduct, emotion, and ideals of personal character. Ennobling Love studies forms of affectionate attachment that medieval aristocratic culture treated as sources of virtue and honour. Rather than assuming that love in the period followed modern divisions between friendship and desire, Jaeger reads chronicles, letters, poetry, and courtly narratives within their own social vocabulary. The University of Pennsylvania Press published it in 1999 as part of its Middle Ages Series. Jaeger's related studies include The Origins of Courtliness, The Envy of Angels, and Scholars and Courtiers, works that trace how schools and courts shaped standards of behaviour. Ennobling Love extends that inquiry by asking how admiration for another person could be understood as morally elevating and publicly meaningful. Its comparative range across languages and genres makes the book both literary criticism and a history of sensibility, attentive to concepts whose meanings changed substantially after the Middle Ages.