The portrayal of love in this reading is different than how love is seen in other poetry we have read.  In most of the other poetry, they see love as something that can be harmful as well, but for different reasons.  The troubadours and trobairitz find love to be troubling because it is basically unobtainable.  They believe that love causes pain because others do not love us back, do not show us the respect we deserve, and/or feel lost without their love.  Poetry before that brings out feelings that love is blind and changes who we are and it can be destructive or for the better.  In the sense that love can be destructive, this poetry falls in line with other poetry we have read.  The author thinks that love causes us to sin, and therefore we are ruined/bring our own downfall upon ourselves.

I think the Archpriest has some skewed images of what love is, and this idea of what "love" is to him makes the reader consider what anything really means.  After all words are just arbitrary names.  People assign words to things; they do not naturally have them.  After reading thing I began to think that everything is in the eye of the beholder.  However you see it, is the way it is (to you).  He sees love as an evil when I do not.  He thinks that love fuels all things, but he is just assigning the word "love" to so many different feelings.  He talks about love causing tragedy and despair.  His reasoning?  We love our faith, we love people, we love money, we love material possessions, etc.  But if someone were to ask me why these tragedies occur, I would not put love in my answer.  I would delusions, greed, selfishness, hate, etc.  Its all about how you look at it.  The way the archpriest sees things may be right.  The way I see things may be right.