Courtly Love Essay

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

From the 31 Rules of Courtly Love, I agree strongly with rule 31. It states Nothing forbids one woman being loved by two men or one man by two women. Equally important there are many examples displayed of this type of love all over. For instance the television show Love and Hip Hop Atlanta that is broadcasted on VH1, it's one man and two women. Another example includes Sister Wives that broadcasts on TLC which is a television show that involves one man and five wives. However, the movie Twilight also has a love triangle with two men and one woman. Additionally, the most accepted are in a common religion of Muslims, one man, and up to four wives. This form of Courtly Love is now a practice that is showcased to the world in a manner of explanation.

In an era of frequent violence between knights and kingdoms, there had to be an order for which the sword-wielders could follow so that there would not be uncontrollable bloodshed. In order for there to be a set of laws established for the knights of the Anglo-Saxon era, the law of chevalrie was created. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight has some insight into the rules of chivalry concerning one specifically: courtly love. The rules of “courtly love” require wit and deceit with an intention of good behind it. The chivalric rules in this aspect require a good and clever battle with words rather than swords.

The Art of Courtly Love. This missive, written to Andreas’ friend Walter in approximately 1185, describes the intricate and ever fluctuating relationship between members of the opposite sex in a highly Christianized Europe. This distinction between the morals of a pre-Christian versus Christian culture becomes increasingly evident when analyzing these two writings. However, this contrast still does not overcome the overarching theme of both publications: love at it’s highest form manifests itself in the form of sex. The texts contain a number of similarities while simultaneously maintaining sharp contrasts.

The familiarity with the love tradition makes it easily mistakable for a natural and universal phenomenon and even brings a laxity of enquiring into its origins. However, it is difficult of not impossible to show love to be anything more than an artistic phenomenon or construct- a literary per formative innovation of Middle Ages. Courtly love was a medieval European formation of nobly, and politely expressing love and admiration. Courtly love was secret and between members of the nobility. (Simpson).

Throughout The Canterbury Tales Geoffrey Chaucer satirizes the chivalric code, in particular courtly love, in order to ridicule the knights in the noble social estates during his time. He utilizes the literary genre of a fable, which contains a moral lesson personified through animals, in “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” to mock society's dignified views of courtly love. Chaucer illustrates the ridiculousness of courtly love when he notes,“This gentle cock was master in some measure / Of seven hens, all there to do his pleasure. / They were his sisters and his paramours” (Chaucer 215).

The art of courtly love is difficult to pinpoint because there are many facets that extend into different areas. In the Pre-Raphaelite and Medieval periods, love was more formulated with rules, moral standards, and codes. Courtly love is often seen as the "love" practiced by kings, queens, and other nobility because of the mystique that surrounds legendary stories like Lancelot and Guinevere. Courtly love encompasses spiritual awakening, lust, passion, adultery, and religion; therefore, the art of courtly love intrigues as well as interests its readers.

Making sense out of love and marriage ideals is not an easy task, especially as human actions in emotional circumstances do not follow any logic. It is a fact that has been proven consistently over time, across cultures and is also corroborated by many of the stories within Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. In particular, The Knight’s Tale and The Miller’s Tale, that take place in two different social settings, make fun of conventional beliefs about love and marriage in the context of values such as bravery, street smartness, morality, and faithfulness. Through their plots, the narrators’ styles, and the contrast they set up between cherished and practiced values, the two tales highlight that human behavior

In the words of Alfred Lord Tennyson: "Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. (7)" This quote has been one that has motivated love for what feels like forever. The quote is saying that it is better to have felt love and lost it, then to have never felt love. These words are extremely truthful. Loving and losing is better than not loving because lessons are taught, new emotions are established, and standards are set for future love and future lovers (4). Even though the circumstances of the loss contribute to the overall worth of the love, all losses are worth it in their own way(3).

Although the importance and presence of love in a person’s life over the ages has not changed, the role of love in one’s life has changed drastically in an individual’s personal life, specifically in marriage. During the Elizabethan era, it was “considered foolish to marry for love” (Ros). Fifteenth century marriage was seen as a means of gaining property, friends, and allies; therefore, marriages among wealthy landowners were more commonly arranged than those among people from lower classes. Many couples would not even meet before their wedding day and they were often very young, as young as twelve years old for the girls. Under these conditions, it was very uncommon to have a marriage filled with love, some marriages even ended

For a brief description of the concept of “courtly love”, a few characteristics must be highlighted. Courtly love appeared in Provence (southern France) in the eleventh century. It consists on the expression of love in its most sincere, chivalric and noble form. It tended to be chaste and adulterous. It was also secret and, in general, always took place between the members of the higher classes of society. Andreas Capellanus defines it in The Art of Courtly Love as “the pure love which binds together the hearts of two lovers with every feeling of delight. This kind consists on the contemplation of the mind and the affection of the heart; it goes as far as the kiss and the embrace and the modest contact with the nude lover, omitting the final solace, for that is not permitted for those who wish to love purely. […] That is called mixed love which gets its effect from every delight of the flesh and culminates in the final act of Venus” (p.122). In Capellanus’ definition, it seems to me, that the previous elements mentioned are placed out of the game of love, as long as we consider courtly love to be expressed by the total submission of a young man towards his lady. The fulfilment of the souls in courtly love can rarely be obtained, because there is no equality in the relationship of the individuals. The lover’s love is immanently pure, genuine in essence, but the beloved is usually characterized as unachievable because her self is so perfect that there is not much the lover can

Both Adieu m'amour, adieu ma joye by Dufay and Le souvenir de vous me tue by Morton are the songs of the courtly love and, they are composed in the rondeau form. From one point of view, the form of the music, rondeau, may be too specific in terms of the melody order to express the poem of the courtly love which is about a man's feelings of distant love. However, in these two specific songs, Dufay and Morton used their clever criativities to let the repetition of the melodies and the poem fit naturally to the overall flow of the songs.

Interviewee 2 from Jaipur, India : First of all, I think that people feel love differently. I disagree with him when he says that blind people cannot love. I know of many blind people who are in love. I think they feel love more strongly. This is maybe

The term "courtly love" is a highly ambiguous one. As it applies to works of literature, it spans over hundreds of years and over a half dozen countries. Hence finding its specific literary and allegorical definition and impact on literature is difficult. It is important to understand the roots of courtly love. To do so means that one gains a greater understanding of the most foundational element of any society- the relationship between men and women. If a student of literature holds only a vague understanding of courtly love, then he or she holds only a vague understanding of medieval culture. In turn when this student moves on to various other periods of British literature, they will have

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