The word "love" -- in French, amour or amors -- has always had a variety of meanings. From ancient times until the Romantic period, say around 1750 or so, it had two basic meanings. In Latin they were "caritas" (English: "charity", as in the King James Bible) and "cupiditas" (English: "cupidity"; think of Cupid).
"Charity" does not mean "alms to the poor" as it does today, but the spiritual impulse behind such motives: spiritual love, pleasing to God.
"Cupidity" meant not just greed for profit or sexual desire bur any earthly, as opposed to spiritual, love. ("Earthly" love is often called "worldly love", so watch out for the word "world").
And the word "love" encompasses both meanings. That suggests a number of issues for us as readers of literature:
When a work can be read both ways, the meaning of the work of literature is often quite different, just as the two "loves" are very different from one another.
Example of works demonstrating "charity", or spiritual love -- which was often defined as "the love of Christ for mankind" or "the love of Christ for the Church", are poems like "Stond well, moder, under Rode," "Adam lay ibounden,", and "Farewell this world, I take my leve forever.".
Perhaps works that demonstrate "cupidity", or earthly love, are such as "I have a gentil cock" and "Bring us in good ale.".
The rest of the poems, including the ones we will read in class can be profitably considered as poems in which the kind of love involved in the poem is ambiguous. The poems can be read with very different meanings, depending on which kind of love one assumes the poem to involve.
Think about these issues. Write interpretations of two of the Middle English lyrics -- read all of them on pages 205-210 in our anthology (3rd edition) -- , in both senses: assuming the "love" involved is earthly (or worldly); and then assuming the "love" involved is spiritual.
Write 350 words in all. Email to me and to your group by 10 p.m. the evening before class.