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Accomplishments Of Courtly Love

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4 The achievements of Courtly Love
Courtly love succeeded in making love between two persons more honourable than it has been before, when marriage between a man and a women was mainly seen as a tool used for economical, political or religious reasons (Singer, Philosophy of Love 33).
4.1 Courtly Love and Christianity
As already stated, Courtly Love enabled the access to complete love and oneness outside of religious environments. Generally, it tried to temper the Christian ideas during the Middle Ages. It distanced the conception of love from God and looked at love as a natural and autonomous concept. It showed that for undergoing true love no relation to God is needed and that love can be experienced also between two human beings, normally …show more content…

Dante, for example, referred in his De Vulgari Eloquenti to it and many troubadour poets.
Simultaneously to the conventionalization of the troubadour love poetry, also the laws of love were organized and classified through the imitation of Ovid (Mott 5). It is from his Ars Amatoria that the idea of love as a virtue and art originally arose (Mott 55).
Having its origins in the early troubadours, the concept of courtly love was then brought forth by Bernart de Ventadorn and Peire Rogier and reached its full expansion in the texts of Chrétien de Troies (Mott 24) .
“Love and adventure are his themes, and his imagination adorned the court of Arthur with the brilliance of achievement and refinement of manners which made the cavaliers of the Round Table the ideal models of mediaeval knighthood” (Mott 24)

Chrétien appears to be the first northern singer taking Provencal lyrics as a model (Mott 24) following basic patterns like describing Enide as incredibly beautiful, but he does not strictly stick to it and alters the ideas of courtly love, for example, by changing positions in terms of power in Erec and Enide. (Mott …show more content…

In contrast to de Ventador, he prefers not to be loved by her if it is for her sake (Mott 19-20).

5.3 Different types of Courtly Love
Given the fact that different types of courtly love emerged in different areas, there is not one universal concept of courtly love and no general definition of courtliness. For example, poets following the courtly love tradition of Southern France, according to the theory, were not committing adultery with the ruler’s wives, but their poetry was written only for the ladies’ amusement, which was called “fin’ amors” translated into pure love. In northern regions of France, however, the troubadour tradition often included sexual love and, therefore, adultery. (Singer, Philosophy of Love 33)
But contrary to a common claim, courtly love does not necessarily involve adultery or having unmarried sex, but could also be experienced between husband and wife. (Singer, Philosophy of Love 33)
The most important type of categorization of troubadour poetry is the distinction of poetry with a highly religious content and poetry with a highly secular content. (O'Donoghue

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