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COURTLY LOVE AND MIDDLE AGES LITERATURE
In this paper, we shall study the tradition of Courtly love in the Middle Ages as reflected by literary works produced in that period. The paper will first focus on what the exact nature of Courtly Love, then proceed to briefly discuss its development and finally take into account the literary works of Middle Ages that contained elements of this tradition.
Courtly love refers to romance in chivalric tradition that emerged during the first Millennium and endured throughout the medieval period. Andreas Capellanus, in his book, The Art of Courtly Love, defines courtly loved as ". . . A certain inborn suffering derived from the sight of and excessive meditation upon the beauty of the opposite sex, which causes each one to wish above all things the embraces of the other and by common desire to carry out all of love's precepts in the other's embrace." This love had some distinct features as it usually involved a pure, intense feeling of devotion for some unattainable beloved. Women played the dominant role in courtly love equation as men were supposed to remain steadfastly devoted to the woman regardless of her own involvement and with little regard for consequences. This form of love dominated the medieval literature especially from 1100 to 1300. One of the most enduring texts on the subject is Andreas Capellanus' work The Art of Courtly Love and the fact that it has been translated many times, indicates that the concept of courtly love was popular in middle ages and has generated deep interest in modern times as well for students and critics of literature. Barbara Tuchman discusses Courtly Love in her A Distant Mirror. The author captures the very essence of the tradition or feeling when she writes:
Courtly love was understood by its contemporaries to be love for its own sake, romantic love, true love, physical love, unassociated with property or family . . . focused on another man's wife, since only such an illicit liaison could have no other aim but love alone. . . . courtly love was considered to ennoble a man, to improve him in every way. It would make him concerned to show an example of goodness, to do his utmost to preserve honor, never letting dishonor touch himself or the lady he loved. On a lower scale, it would lead him to keep his teeth and nails clean, his clothes rich and well groomed, his conversation witty and amusing, his manners courteous to all, curbing arrogance and coarseness, never brawling in a lady's presence ....The chivalric love affair moved from worship through declaration of passionate devotion, virtuous rejection by the lady, renewed wooing with oaths of eternal fealty, moans of approaching death from unsatisfied desire, heroic deeds of valor which won the lady's heart by prowess, [very rarely] consummation of the secret love, followed by endless adventures and subterfuges to a tragic denouement. . . . It remained artificial, a literary convention, a fantasy . . . more for purposes of discussion than for every day practice." (66-68)
Not much is known about the exact origin of the tradition of courtly love. It has often been cited as result of Arabian influence while some claim it had purely European roots. Regardless of its roots, courtly love has sparked great interest and many critics and historians have tried to trace the reasons for its emergence in the medieval period. In the introduction The Art of Courtly Love, Parry explains: "Even if we accept the theory that courtly love is a fusion of Latin and Moorish elements . . . still we have not solved the problem of how and why it developed." (p. 12-13) The image of female as the icon of purity and object of man's intense devotion originated much before the medieval period. Stories of men's extreme devotion were found in works that originated between 9000 and 7000 B.C. As one historian puts it: "[I]n the countless millennia before Christianity, [woman] had been the glory of the world, an object of worship among her people. . .." (Davis: 210)
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