Courtly Love / Fin' Amors (Joseph VanBuren)
Though
we may think of it as a universal and eternal human experience, love as we know
it may be little more than a literary construct. More specifically, romantic
love is seen by some scholars as a product of the lyrical songs and literature
of the Middle Ages. “L’amour courtois” or “fin amor” (refined love) originated
with the troubadours in southern France in the eleventh century. Literary works
before this time are largely devoid of romantic love. Ancient Greek literature
speaks of “eros” as passion and lust; religious texts mention “agape” or
selfless, platonic love of all humanity. Marriages usually came out of
political or economic alliances. The troubadours challenged all of these
concepts and created a new type of love that eventually became utilized in
courts throughout Europe and influenced writers for centuries to follow,
including William Shakespeare.
The
general attributes of courtly love once commonly practiced among European lords
and ladies of nobility are still easily recognizable today: love at first
sight; the knight’s infatuation with the maiden; he showering her with gifts,
songs, and various other signs of affection and devotion; his status as as well
as a code of conduct and rules of etiquette. But what exactly were all of these
rules? Apparently, the system of courtly love was so complicated that a French
princess had her chaplain, Andreas Capellanus, write a rulebook: De Arte Honeste Amandi (roughly
translated as The Art of Courtly Love).
While perhaps not a definitive historical example of love in medieval times, it
does discuss some of the well-known aspects of courtly love, including its
extramarital status. After all, says Capellanus, “love can have no place
between husband and wife.”
It
is clear that Shakespeare was influenced by the conventions of courtly love. One
example is in Romeo and Juliet.
Before falling in love with Juliet, Romeo pursues Rosaline in a very courtly
manner. But Shakespeare, being a writer of many dimensions, also rebels against
such conventions when it suits his purposes. This is evident in Sonnet 130. In
this poem, Shakespeare uses every courtly cliché of the time to say what the
speaker’s mistress is not. She is not
quite fair and beautiful, her voice is annoying, and she could benefit from the
use of Listerine. Not exactly the kind of girl you fall in love with at first sight
and shower with gifts and song, yet he swears she is as special as any other
woman ever the subject of poetry. Perhaps inspired by the troubadours before
him, Shakespeare challenged the notions of love in his time. By both rejecting
and embracing certain conventions of courtly love, he helped to immortalize the
complexity of human emotion through literature.
Sources:
http://central.gutenberg.org/article/WHEBN0000063792/Courtly%20love
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