Laine Doggett/ LOVE CURES: Healing & Love Magic & Z Budapest

Laine Doggett, Assoc. Prof of French at St. Mary's College in MD discusses her book, LOVE CURES - Healing & Love Magic in Old French Romance....What is love?  Popular culture bombards us with notions of the intoxicating capacities of love or of beguiling women who can bewitch or heal - to the point that it is easy to believe that such images are timeless and universal.  Not so, argues Laine Doggett.  Aspects of love that are expressed in popular music - such as "love is a drug," "secual healing," and "love potion number nine" - trace deep roots to Old French romance of the high Middle Ages.  A young woman heals a poisoned knight.  A mother prepares a love potion for a daughter who will marry a stranger.  How can readers interpret such events?While some scholars have dismissed these women as fantasy figures or witches, Doggett looks at them in the light of medical and magical practices of the high Middle Ages.  Love Cures argues that these practitioners, as represented in romance, have shaped modern notions of love. Doggett seeks to engage scholars of love, marriage and magic in disciplines ad diverse as literature, history, anthropology and philosophy.  RETURNING in the latter part of the show will be Z. Budapest and Bobbie Grennier giving us an update on the upcoming Merline Stone tribute.