What is Courtly Love?

    Properly applied, the phrase l'amour courtois identified an extravagantly artificial and stylized relationship--a forbidden affair that was characterized by five main attributes. In essence, the relationship was
 

• Aristocratic. As its name implies, courtly love was practiced by noble lords and ladies; its proper milieu was the royal palace or court.

• Ritualistic. Couples engaged in a courtly relationship conventionally exchanged gifts and tokens of their affair. The lady was wooed according to elaborate conventions of etiquette (cf. "courtship" and "courtesy") and was the constant recipient of songs, poems, bouquets, sweet favors, and ceremonial gestures. For all these gentle and painstaking attentions on the part of her lover, she need only return a short hint of approval, a mere shadow of affection. After all, she was the exalted domina--the commanding "mistress" of the affair; he was but her servus--a lowly but faithful servant.

• Secret. Courtly lovers were pledged to strict secrecy. The foundation for their affair--indeed the source of its special aura and electricity--was that the rest of the world (except for a few confidantes or go-betweens) was excluded. In effect, the lovers composed a universe unto themselves--a special world with its own places (e.g., the secret rendezvous), rules, codes, and commandments.

• Adulterous. "Fine love"--almost by definition--was extramarital. Indeed one of its principle attractions was that it offered an escape from the dull routines and boring confinements of noble marriage (which was typically little more than a political or economic alliance for the purpose of producing royal offspring). The troubadours themselves scoffed at marriage, regarding it as a glorified religious swindle. In its place they exalted their own ideal of a disciplined and decorous carnal relationship whose ultimate objective was not crude physical satisfaction, but a sublime and sensual intimacy.

• Literary. Before it established itself as a popular real-life activity, courtly love first gained attention as a subject and theme in imaginative literature. Ardent knights, that is to say, and their passionately adored ladies were already popular figures in song and fable before they began spawning a host of real-life imitators in the palace halls and boudoirs of medieval Europe. (Note: Even the word "romance"--from Old French romanz--began life as the name for a narrative poem about chivalric heroes. Only later was the term applied to the distinctive  love relationship commonly featured in such poems.)

 

WORLD LITERATURE I (ENG251)

Courtly Love Study Guide:

Dr. Diane Thompson, NVCC, ELI  http://novaonline.nvcc.edu/eli/eng251/amourstudy.htm#develop

---

DEVELOPMENT OF COURTLY LOVE

Courtly Love as a concept, if not as a practice, developed out of a mixture of Arab Love Poetry and Troubadour Poetry. The Cult of the Virgin Mary got mixed in a bit later.

Although today the notion of whether or not there ever was a cult or practice of Courtly Love has come under much attack, one can find poetry that clearly used its concepts, especially in the 12th and 13th centuries. 

There are three unique aspects of Courtly Love:

(Following Denomy, The Heresy of Courtly Love (1947), 20-21)

This power of transformation, of ennobling the character of the lover, is the distinguishing characteristic of Courtly Love. Courtly love is something entirely new in Europe, and the major source of our modern ideas about romantic love.

Courtly love is not very popular currently, especially not in serious literature and film. Why? Maybe there's a relation between the woman's movement and the decline of courtly love? An interesting question to think about.

 

---

TROUBADOURS

Troubadours: They flourished between 1100 and 1350 and were attached to various courts in the south of France. The troubadours wrote almost entirely about sexual love and developed the concept and practice of courtly love

There was no tradition of passionate love literature in the European middle ages before the twelfth century, although there was such a tradition in Arabic-speaking Spain and Sicily. This Arab love poetry was readily accessible to Europeans living in Italy and Spain and was a major source of the Troubadour-developed cult of courtly love.

Troubadour love poetry, although conceptually adulterous, inspired the man (and perhaps the woman) and ennobled the lover's character.

 

---

THE MAIN FEATURES OF TROUBADOUR POETRY:

"Though [this]...love was sensual, their ideal of "pure" love prohibited sexual intercourse between the lovers at least in theory." Of course, in fact, people probably did what they always have done.

(following: Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, 871)

 

---

EVE & MARY - WOMEN IN THE MIDDLE AGES

Feudal nobility arranged marriage to suit families' advantages, often while the children were still infants.

A married woman was the ward of her husband, had limited legal rights and was subject to the will of her husband, who had the power to punish her physically.

Pregnancy and childbirth were frequent and risky.

The middle ages produced a great deal of misogynic literature expressing the traditional church position:

Not only were women inferior, but they had characters like that of the serpent, cursed by God like the Genesis serpent to a lowly life of servitude and pain

However,

There was Mary as well as Eve to provide images of medieval womanhood. Mary was not only praiseworthy for her holiness, but for her embodiment of ideal feminine traits. Mary's primary virtues centered on her freedom from sexuality. She was conceived by divine intervention and she conceived Jesus immaculately. The "good" feminine was thus divorced from sexuality, although not from motherhood.

During the 13th century, Mary increased in importance as the divine feminine mediator between human beings and God. She interceded for human beings seeking salvation, as Beatrice did for Dante.

The exaltation of the beatified Virgin Mary climaxed in the Marian cult or cult of the Virgin Mary, which influenced the literature, music and art of the high and late Middle Ages.

Consequently, at the same time that people were praying to the Virgin Mary for salvation, they were condemning Eve for the Fall of Man. This Eve/Mary dualism allowed and even encouraged conflicting attitudes toward medieval women.

On the one hand, women held a high position in the system of Christian redemption, yet on the other hand, they were responsible for the wretched, sinful, corrupt state of fallen humanity.

This dualistic religious attitude towards women offers us some insight into the curious mixture of love and religion, sex and purity we find in the courtly love poetry and stories of the Middle Ages.

(The above section is based on the Introduction to Three Medieval Views of Women, translated and edited by Fiero, Pfeffer, & Allain)

 

---

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF COURTLY LOVE

Neither the Greeks nor the Romans thought that passionate love between the sexes could improve or transform the lovers. Rather, they thought of passionate love as either a punishment inflicted on men by the Gods, akin to madness, or as mere sensual gratification, not to be taken very seriously.

While antiquity did not approve of passionate love between the sexes, Christianity absolutely deplored it.

Even passionate love between spouses was considered theologically sinful, if unavoidable, until the thirteenth century when the Church began to modify its attitudes on this issue.

So, when a medieval passionate lover obediently subjects himself to the will of his beloved lady, he grants her a status which women did not enjoy either in Antiquity or in the Middle Ages.

HOME

I wanted to put these here because I think that there are some good ideas in these sets of rules. It's also interesting to see how our ideas about love have changed with time (OK, so we don't exactly have the idea of courtly love around anymore, but still). Some of this is certainly outdated and probably not very useful, but some of it is still good advice; I'm sure you'll recognize which points are useful even today. Both lists apparently come from the same source, The Art of Courtly Love by Andreas Capellanus.  gO TO THIS SITE FOR MORE INFO: http://icg.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/special/authors/andreas/de_amore.html

The Twelve Chief Rules in Love

 

 

 

 

 

 

From The Art of Courtly Love by Andreas Capellanus

1. Thou shalt avoid avarice like the deadly pestilence and shalt embrace its opposite.
2. Thou shalt keep thyself chaste for the sake of her whom thou lovest.
3. Thou shalt not knowingly strive to break up a correct love affair that someone else is engaged in.
4. Thou shalt not chose for thy love anyone whom a natural sense of shame forbids thee to marry.
5. Be mindful completely to avoid falsehood.
6. Thou shalt not have many who know of thy love affair.
7. Being obedient in all things to the commands of ladies, thou shalt ever strive to ally thyself to the service of Love.
8. In giving and receiving love's solaces let modesty be ever present.
9. Thou shalt speak no evil.
10. Thou shalt not be a revealer of love affairs.
11. Thou shalt be in all things polite and courteous.
12. In practising the solaces of love thou shalt not exceed the desires of thy lover.

 

        The Art of Courtly Love

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From The Art of Courtly Love by Andreas Capellanus

1. Marriage is no real excuse for not loving.
2. He who is not jealous cannot love.
3. No one can be bound by a double love.
4. It is well known that love is always increasing or decreasing.
5. That which a lover takes against the will of his beloved has no relish.
6. Boys do not love until they reach the age of maturity.
7. When one lover dies, a widowhood of two years is required of the survivor.
8. No one should be deprived of love without the very best of reasons.
9. No one can love unless he is propelled by the persuasion of love.
10. Love is always a stranger in the home of avarice.
11. It is not proper to love any woman whom one would be ashamed to seek to marry.
12. A true lover does not desire to embrace in love anyone except his beloved.
13. When made public love rarely endures.
14. The easy attainment of love makes it of little value: difficulty of attainment makes it prized.
15. Every lover regularly turns pale in the presence of his beloved.
16. When a lover suddenly catches sight of his beloved his heart palpitates.
17. A new love puts an old one to flight.
18. Good character alone makes any man worthy of love.
19. If love diminishes, it quickly fails and rarely revives.
20. A man in love is always apprehensive.
21. Real jealousy always increases the feeling of love.
22. Jealousy increases when one suspects his beloved.
23. He whom the thought of love vexes eats and sleeps very little.
24. Every act of a lover ends in the thought of his beloved.
25. A true lover considers nothing good except what he thinks will please his beloved.
26. Love can deny nothing to love.
27. A lover can never have enough of the solaces of his beloved.
28. A slight presumption causes a lover to suspect his beloved.
29. A man who is vexed by too much passion usually does not love.
30. A true lover is constantly and without intermission possessed by the thought of his beloved.
31. Nothing forbids one woman being loved by two men or one man by two women.