Assignment #4: Part I

The following brief history of Valentine’s Day is taken from the history section on its Wikipedia page. I was surprised to find that February 14^th, St. Valentine’s Day, commemorates a saint or a number of saints about whom very little is known: “Saint Valentine (in Latin, Valentinus) is the name of several martyred saints of ancient Rome. Of the Saint Valentine whose feast is on February 14, nothing is known except his name and that he was buried at the Via Flaminia north of Rome on February 14.” An ancient Roman fertility festival also apparently fell on Februrary 15, although it is uncertain if there is a correlation.

The first recorded association of Valentine’s day and romance was Chaucer’s 1382 poem Parlement of Foules. The poem outlines a fictional tradition as the context for the marriage of King Richard II of England to Anne of Bohemia, although apparently Chaucer referred not to the February 14^th holiday but the May 2^nd holiday for Valentine of Genoa. A “High Court of Love” was set up in Paris on Valentine’s Day in 1400 to arbitrate marriage contracts and deal with domestic disputes. Valentine’s Day is mentioned by Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1600-1601).

In the 1840s the holiday was reinvented, especially in America. The first mass-produced Valentine’s were crated by Esther Howland of Worcester, Massachusetts: “Her father operated a large book and stationery store, but Howard took her inspiration from an English valentine she had received, so clearly the practice of sending Valentine's cards had existed in England before it became popular in North America. The English practice of sending Valentine's cards appears in Elizabeth Gaskell's Mr. Harrison's Confessions (published 1851).” Eventually this grew into the modern tradition of giving not only cards but also chocolates and other presents to romantic partners but also among friends, family and loved ones more generally.