Courtly Love

1. Courtly Love Rules for your medieval crushes

2. What Is “Courtly Love?” • Courtly love originated in Aquitaine (France) • It applied to nobility (kings, lords, knights, etc.) rather than peasants • Nobility typically married for power/wealth (not love) • Courtly love allows for crushes and flirting • MUST be chaste • Typically involved writing love letters and poems, holding hands, and dancing • NOT healthy/real love as we know now; this is infatuation/“puppy love” • N/B: The term “lover” is different from how we use it. There is no cheating involved in courtly love; your lover is simply the person you’re in love with, not someone you have grown-up relations with.

3. Rules about Relationships: • Marriage is no excuse for not loving. • No one can be bound by “double love.” • When one lover dies, the other must behave like a widow/widower for at least 2 years. • It is improper to love a woman you would be ashamed to marry. • Public love rarely endures. • A real lover can never have enough solaces with his beloved. • Nothing forbids a woman from being loved by 2 men or a man by 2 women.

4. Rules about Jealousy • He who is not jealous cannot love. • A true lover has no desire to embrace in love anyone other than his beloved. • A new love puts to flight an old one. • A man in love is always apprehensive. • Real jealousy increases the feelings of love.

5. Standards for Lovers • Boys cannot truly love until they reach the age of maturity. • Every lover turns pale in the presence of his beloved. • When a lover catches sight of his beloved, the heart palpitates. • No one should be deprived of love without the very best of reasons. • Good character alone makes a man worthy of love. • Someone in love eats and sleeps very little. • A true lover is constantly consumed by thoughts of his beloved. • A man vexed by too much passion cannot truly love. • Love is a stranger in the home of the greedy.

6. Standards on How to Love • Love should only increase (<) never decrease (>). • That which a lover takes against the will of his beloved has no relish. • True love considers nothing good other than what would please his beloved. • Easy attainment of love gives it little value; difficult attainment of love is prized. • Love denies nothing to love.

7. Stages of Courtly Love in Literature • 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 (kisses, gifts, scandal???) • Endless adventures and subterfuges avoiding detection

8. Our Readings: • “The Lady of Shalott” by Alfred Lord Tennyson • Is the lady’s love for Lancelot courtly? • Sir Gawain & the Green Knight (author anonymous, J.R.R. Tolkien translation) • Is Gawain chivalrous? • What is the extent of love between Gawain and the lady of the castle?