Courtly Love

Leslie Hall

Feb 09, 2000 12:09 AM

Vimala C. Pasupathi

First of all, I think in order to fully understand courtly love, it helps to trace one of the history of its origin. The earliest traces of the genre “courtly love” can be found in the poetry of Ovid, from ancient Roman times under August us’ rule. His main works, The Art of Love, The Cure for Love, and Amours are sometimes said to set out a formal system of love, but however they are mostly just Instruction Love Rhetoric. From these early poems, the men of medieval time construe a mixture of Latin and Moorish ideals to achieve the ground-works of courtly love. The Latin influence of Ovid gives courtly love its sensuality, while Arabic influences add to the sensuality but mostly the spirituality of the genre. The troubadours of southern France are a good starting place for where the idea of courtly love in medieval times truly began. They combined these two different elements of influence to write many lyrics that became known as courtly lyrics. The ideas of courtly love closely followed the outlines that Ovid made in his writings, with slight changes due to the expanse of time between their lyrics (written in 12th century France) and his poetry (written in ancient Rome). The basic ideas that Ovid laid out for love, and that the troubadours carried on in their courtly love traditions, were as follows: 1. The best lovers are other men’s wives. 2. It is okay to have many love affairs as long as all are kept secret. 3. Pleasing a woman is done through absurd actions and hardships. 4. The lover will suffer from a sickness making him pale, thin and sleepless. 5. In order to win one’s affections, the best way is often through jealousy. With these ideas in mind, the medieval ages became an era of courtly love. As for the history of our text, The Art of Courtly Love, we need look no further than the reign of Countess Marie de Champagne. Following her husband’s death, the Countess was made temporary liege of the estate until her son was old enough for the job. During this time, it is said that the Countess commissioned many works of the courtly love genre. One of the resulting works of literature was Andreas Capellanus’ The Art of Courtly Love. Though the book was written under Marie’s direction, Andreas seems to agree with the basic concepts of which he writes. This work became one of the most popular designs for courtly love during its time and long afterward. The number of manuscripts that were preserved and translated into the vernacular shows this point. By the 16th century, the text had been translated into French, Latin, Italian, Spanish, and German – the exception being that it never was translated into English.