Courtly love

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Courtly love was a medieval European conception of ennobling love which found its genesis in the ducal and princely courts in regions of present-day southern France at the end of the eleventh century. In essence, courtly love was a contradictory experience between erotic desire and spiritual attainment, "a love at once illicit and morally elevating, passionate and self-disciplined, humiliating and exalting, human and transcendent."

The term "courtly love" was first popularized by Gaston Paris in 1883, and has since come under a wide variety of definitions and uses, even being dismissed as nineteenth-century romantic fiction. Its interpretation, origins and influences continue to be a matter of discourse.

Origin of term

The term "Courtly Love" was first popularized by Gaston Paris in his 1883 article "Études sur les romans de la Table Ronde: Lancelot du Lac, II: Le conte de la charrette", a treatise inspecting Chretien de Troyes's Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart (1177). Paris said "amour courtois" was an idolization and ennobling discipline. The lover (idolizer) accepts the independence of his mistress and tries to make himself worthy of her by acting bravely and honorably (nobly) and by doing whatever deeds she might desire. Though sexual satisfaction, Paris said, may not have been a goal or even end result, nor was the love entirely Platonic as it was based on sexual attraction (see section on sexuality below for further views).

The term and its definition as described by Paris was soon widely accepted and adopted. In 1936 C. S. Lewis wrote the influential "The Allegory of Love" further solidifying courtly love as "love of a highly specialized sort, whose characteristics may be enumerated as Humility, Courtesy, Adultery, and the Religion of Love"

Later, historians such as D.W. Robertson in the 1960s and John C. Moore and E. Talbot Donaldson in the 1970s, were critical of the term as being a modern invention, the latter calling it "The Myth of Courtly Love", because it is not supported in medieval texts. However, even though the term "courtly love" does only appear in just one extant Provençal poem (as cortez amors in a late 12th century lyric by Piere d'Alvernhe), it is closely related to the term fin' amor ("fine love") which does appear frequently in Provençal and French, as well as German translated as hohe Minne. In addition other terms and phrases associated with "courtliness" and "love" are common throughout the Middle Ages. Even though Paris used a term with little support in the contemporaneous literature, it was not a neologism and does usefully describe a particular conception of love and focuses on the courtliness that was at its essence.

More information is available at [ Wikipedia:Courtly_love ]
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