A College Student’s Approach to Courtly Love Essay

Service in love often has a positive connotation which suggests a profound love, whereas possession generally receives a negative connotation suggesting a superficial love. However, Geoffrey Chaucer and William Shakespeare explore in depth the roles of both possession and service in love and reveal to their readers which one is ultimately the superior way to gain love. The stories of “The Knight’s Tale” and The Tempest are different thematically, yet the thread which unites them both expresses similar ideas regarding love, possession and service. Both William Shakespeare and Geoffrey Chaucer show the reader love cannot be claimed; it is earned through service of the heart. By examining the similarities in “The Knight’s Tale” and The Tempest

romantic love celebrated in songs and romances of the Medieval Period. Moreover, being a code

do not think this is genuine love to me as he later falls in love with

In addition to the similarities found between courtly love and Sir Thomas Malory’s personal life, the element of courtly love was a popular theme during the middle ages. At the time of his life (15th C.) it would be hard to imagine that a person of noble class would not be familiar with the element of courtly love in the literature of the time. Indeed, the very strong element of courtly love in Morte Darthur, particularly in the relationship between Lancelot and Guinevere, would be considered a major coincidence without prior

Guinevere, being a lady of the court, abides to the dictates of courtly love. Courtly love is a code created by the court poets in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, under the promotion of Marie de Champagne. There is more of a social code than a written law that is adhered to. It is, rather, a fanciful trend that hits the courts of the nobility. Courtly love actually condones fornication, adultery, sacrilege, but represents them as a necessary element to what it considers to be virtuous(Denomy 22). This adultery is accepted, as it is believed that true love cannot be found through the politically arranged marriages that occur. One marries a husband for bettering land holdings, power, and wealth, and

In the play `Romeo and Juliet` the writer William Shakespeare uses the theme of love as a main feature to push the story along. Presented are a plethora of variations of love including family love, true love and courtly love. This essay aims to analyse these three types of love chosen.

“The courtly lady…possesses a curiously hybrid gender. While maintaining stereotypically female sexuality, she also holds, in principle at least, the status of a feudal lord.” Burns’ statement insinuates a reversal of power dynamics between man and woman in the courtly love lyric, implying that the woman’s stereotypical beauty and sexuality in courtship, is a gateway to subverting and overpowering the lovesick male, making her a superior lord. The Amour Courtois lyric is deemed inconsistent with the representation of woman as an empowered “feudal lord” due to the sheer objectification of femininity and beauty. Poets such as Geoffrey Chaucer and William Dunbar commend a woman’s aesthetic appeal or satirise the lack of it, thus elevating medieval misogynistic expectations of physical beauty as a feminine necessity that objectifies women under the control of man’s advances. Throughout courtly love lyrics female beauty is a purely frivolous and superficial trait lacking predominant depth, to render woman as a “lord” would be poetically conflicting as the only power exemplified by female subjects in courtship is through the idolisation and sexual lust of the male devotee.

Is courtly love sinful? 5. What are the reasons behind courtly love? Hebert Moller states that first, the female love object is, as a rule, the wife of another man; and yet this relationship is celebrated as the source of a higher morality, notwithstanding the prevailing religious and social sanctions of monogamy.

By the mid-fourteenth century, courtly love became an accustomed behavior. The heart of courtly love grew to demand a knight’s complete obedience to his mistress under his honor and courtesy, by means of taxing ordeals to prove his enduring commitment to her. The resulting relationship would be characterized by full expressions of mutual lust and love. Fast-forward to America during the Roaring Twenties and romantic love had long become the basis of most marriages, but the great Jay Gatsby revives the medieval style of courtship to address his deep affection for his beauteous lover.

The Canterbury Tales, written by Geoffrey Chaucer around 1386, is a collection of tale told by pilgrims on a religious pilgrimage. Two of these tales, "The Knight's Tale" and "The Wife of Bath's Tale", involve different kinds of love and different love relationships. Some of the loves are based on nobility, some are forced, and some are based on mutual respect for each partner. My idea of love is one that combines aspects from each of the tales told in The Canterbury Tales.

Andreas Capellanus’s book, De Amor (about love), written sometime between 1186-1190, is a book many contemporary historians use to delineate their understanding of courtly love and its prominence during medieval times. In the articles titled, “The Courtly Model” by George Duby, and “Andreas Capellanus’s Scholastic definition of Love” by Don A. Monson, one can see two unique interpretations to Capellanus’s work. For this short reflection, I will first provide the major differences in both authors’ interpretations, while also using their evidence to either support or undermine my own interpretation of the source.

Elements of courtly love can be seen in both "The Book of the Duchess" and "The Knight's Tale." In "The

Courtly love or domnei was a medieval European conception of nobly and chivalrously expressing love and admiration.[1] Generally, courtly love was secret and between members of the nobility.[2] It was also generally not practiced between husband and wife.[2][3]

Geoffrey Chaucer’s romantic poem “The Knight’s Tale” chronicles the adventures of two ancient Greek knights and their quest to win the affection of Emily, a beautiful noblewoman. Bound to uphold the chivalric code of loyalty and honor of the time, Palamon and Arcite discover themselves at odds with their noble ideals as they battle one another in pursuit of love. Unable to reconcile the knight’s oath of honor with their obsessive and selfish desires, the actions of Chaucer’s main characters fail to uphold the basic principles of chivalry.

During the Middle Ages, Courtly love was a code which prescribed the conduct between a lady and her lover (Britannica). The relationship of courtly love was very much like the feudal relationship between a knight and his liege. The lover serves his beloved, in the manner a servant would. He owes his devotion and allegiance to her, and she inspires him to perform noble acts of valor (Schwartz). Capellanus writes, in The Art of Courtly Love, “A true lover considers nothing good except what he thinks will please his beloved”. The stories of Marie de France and Chrétien de Troyes illustrate the conventions of courtly love.