Reddy Wins 2012 Pinkney Prize

Bill Reddy's most recent book -- The Making of Romantic Love -- has won the 2012 Pinkney Prize. This prize is awarded by the Society for French Historical Studies for the best book of the year in French History. Relying on a wealth of recent research into the social and cultural history of the lay aristocracy in the period, Reddy is able to show that courtly love smoothly integrated existing aristocratic values, and permitted aristocrats to legitimate at least some sexual practices long familiar to them. Courtly love, romantic love, was born as a movement of covert resistance.

This award is a double tribute insofar as Bill receives this recognition for a book on a medieval topic, a field into which he has ventured -- clearly -- with great finesse and scholarly acumen.