The lecture entitled " From poeticized Arab-Muslim courtly love to seduction in Mauritanian Moorish society ", given by Corine Fortier, research fellow at LAS, and held as part of the exhibition " Du terrain au texte.Publier l'ethnologie et ses images " will take place on Wednesday 18 March 2026 at 5 pm at the Institute of Civilizations, 52 rue du Cardinal-Lemoine, 75005 Paris.
While courtly love is thought to have been born in the West in the XIIthcentury, love poetry, in its declamatory or sung form, appeared as early as the VIthcentury among the Bedouins of the Arabian desert, before flourishing in the urban Arab world, then in Persia and finally in the West, and largely inspired the Moorish poetry of Mauritania. The man who experiences this state of passion is feminized, finding in the medium of poetry a socially authorized space for expressing his emotions and conquering his beloved. In addition to poems, there are other " amorous expenses" (gifts, risk-taking, etc.) that form part of the seduction. Female love poetry, on the other hand, does not have the same function of conquest or predation, a difference that reveals the asymmetrical polarity of desire according to gender.
