The conception of an ideal and exalted relation between the sexes, which developed in the West in mediaeval times from sources as various as Plato's Phaedrus, Ovid's Ars Amatoria, and the cult of the Virgin Mary. Before the 12th-c women were for the most part considered inferior to men, but courtly love idealized women, placing them on a pedestal, and the lover's feelings for his mistress were supposed to ennoble him and lead him towards moral excellence. Mediaeval love poetry was deeply infused by the idea, which also influenced Renaissance sonneteers, although by this time the convention was treated with some irony.
Although the English expression courtly love in general modern use means an unconsummated relationship, courtly love in medieval Europe was in fact often adulterous.Background
Courtly love had its origins above all in four courtly circles, that of Aquitaine, where William IX, Duke of Aquitaine, was one of the first troubadour poets, that of Provence, where it was known as fin'amor, that of Champagne and that of ducal Burgundy. Courtly love was an aspect of a renewed pleasure in the refinements of the better kind of life, a first stirring of neopaganism in the "delightful understanding" or gai saber of Provençal poets, beginning about the time of the First Crusade.
In essence, courtly love was a formalized system of admiration and courtship, modeled after feudal obligations of fealty translated to the part of a "gentle" knight towards an unavailable lady, usually a person married to someone other than the admirer, and generally of higher status. Courtly love was the idea that a noble man would dedicate his life to the love of a lady. Such a love could not exist within marriage, it was believed, but had to be love from afar — at least in the view of the purists. Although many accounts insisted that love between a married couple was impossible, because they were bound to honor and serve each other, the cases proposed to "Courts of Love" showed women insisting they had not lost their knights' love by marrying them.
At times, the lady could be a princesse lointaine, a far-away princess, and some tales told of men who had fallen in love with women whom they had never seen, merely on hearing their perfection described, but normally she was not so distant that it could not also include consummation. As the etiquette of courtly love became more complicated, the knight might wear the colors of his lady: blue or black were the colors of faithfulness;
The courtly love tradition was non-Christian, providing an alternative to the love of God and the Church, placing salvation in the love of your lady (or man).
Such a courtly love had a civilizing effect on knightly behavior, beginning in the late 11th century; New expressions of highly personal private piety in the 11th century were at the origins of what a modern observer would recognize as a personality, and the vocabulary of piety was also transferred to the conventions of courtly love.
Thus feudalism, piety, and covert neopaganism fused into a new culture, without precedents in Europe—one that was isolated, however, within a few aristocratic courts. Later, a robust bourgeois "anti-courtly" literature in vernacular languages developed in the 14th century, when many of the new courtly elements, such as the yearnings of romantic love, had in fact permeated the urban middle class.
Ideals of courtly love were expressed in the vernacular court poetry called the romans courtois, some of them set within the cycle of poems celebrating King Arthur's court (Tristan, for example). Eleanor of Aquitaine brought ideals of courtly love from Aquitaine first to the court of France, then to England, where she was queen to two kings. Her daughter Marie, Countess of Champagne brought courtly behavior to the Count of Champagne's court. There the late 12th century Andreas Capellanus wrote the tongue-in-cheek Art of Courtly Love and dedicated it to her, and Chrétien de Troyes introduced in her honor the love of Lancelot for Guinevere, in the romance The Knight of the Cart.
Particular standards of etiquette and custom were attached to courtly love, though these varied somewhat with region and time period. In cultures not much influenced by the courtly love tradition, this would seem to be a scandalous, insulting invitation to disaster.
It was (sometimes hotly) debated whether jealousy had any place in the pageant of courtly love, with proponents of both sides of the issue.
Courtly love was perhaps most commonly expressed in the compositions of the troubadours, trouvères and poets (later reflected in such forms as the sonnet), though it found expression in such other customs as the crowning of a "Queen of Love and Beauty" at a tournament, or the formal though unofficial "Courts of Love" presided over by prominent nobles, usually women. While some feel that Courtly Love was primarily a literary convention, occasions such as Philip le Bon's Feast of the Pheasant in 1454 relied on parables drawn from courtly love to incite his nobles to swear to participate in an anticipated crusade and numerous actual political and social conventions were largely based on the formulas dictated by the "rules" of courtly love well into the 15th century.
Accounts of courtly love often overlook the Arabist hypothesis, which has been posed in some form almost from the term's beginnings in the modern period. Given that practices similar to courtly love were already prevalent in Al-Andalus and elsewhere in the Islamicate world, it is very likely that Islamicate practices influenced the Christian Europeans.
More recent writers, taking literary conventions at face value, have postulated that courtly love may have involved elements of what would today be called fetishism and masochism.
Stages of Courtly Love
(Adapted from Barbara Tuchman)
Attraction to the lady, usually via eyes/glance Worship of the lady from afar Declaration of passionate devotion Virtuous rejection by the lady Renewed wooing with oaths of virtue and eternal fealty Moans of approaching death from unsatisfied desire (and other physical manifestations of lovesickness) Heroic deeds of valor which win the lady's heart Consummation of the secret love Endless adventures and subterfuges avoiding detection
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