The best-known example of courtly love is Lancelot's love for Guinevere, the wife of his best friend & king, Arthur of Britain. Some scholars claim that actual courts of love were held there with Eleanor, Marie, and other high-born women presiding over cases in which plaintiffs and defendants would present evidence relating to their romantic relationships others claim no such courts existed and that any literature suggesting they did is satire. According to some scholars, Marie de Champagne was present while others argue she was not. 1170-1174 CE, is a subject of some controversy among modern-day scholars in that no consensus has been reached as to what went on there. Chretien de Troyes & Andreas CapellanusĮleanor's court at Poitier, c. There is no doubt that she inspired the works of Bernard de Ventadour, but it is likely she did the same for many others and, through her daughter Marie, inspired the greatest and most influential works of courtly love literature. 1170 CE and set up her own court at Poitiers, she again surrounded herself with artists. Eleanor admired them, however, and when she separated from Henry II in c. Louis VII, after Eleanor's departure, drove the troubadours from his court as bad influences, and Henry II seems to have had an equally low opinion of the poets. When their marriage was annulled in 1152 CE, Eleanor did the same at her own court in Normandy, where she was especially entertained by the young troubadour Bernard de Ventadour (12th century CE), one of the greatest medieval poets, who would follow her to the court of Henry II in 1152 CE and remain with her there three years, probably as her lover. Throughout her marriage to Louis VII (1137-1152 CE), Eleanor filled her court with poets and artists. The woman, therefore, was little more than a bargaining chip in financial and political transactions. Land equaled power, political prestige, and wealth. An upper-class medieval marriage was a social contract in which a woman was given to a man to further some agenda of the couple's parents and involved the conveyance of land. This love praised by the troubadours had nothing to do with marriage as recognized and sanctified by the Church but was extramarital or premarital, freely chosen – as opposed to a marriage which was arranged by one's social superiors – and passionately pursued. In Provencal the word is cortezia (courtliness), French texts use fin amour (refined love), in Latin the term is amor honestus (honorable, reputable love). Medieval literature employs a variety of terms for this kind of love. The term itself dates back only to 1883 CE when Gaston Paris coined the phrase Amour Courtois to describe Lancelot's love for Guinevere in the romance Lancelot (c. The poetry was quite popular in its time, contributed to the development of the Arthurian Legend, and standardized the central concepts of the western ideal of romantic love. No consensus has been reached on which of these theories is correct, but scholars do agree that this kind of poetry was unprecedented in medieval Europe and coincided with an idealization of women. Some scholars have also suggested that the poetry was religious allegory relating to the heresy of the Catharism, which, persecuted by the Church, spread its beliefs through popular poetry while others claim it represents superficial games of the medieval French courts. Scholars continue to debate whether the literature reflected actual romantic relationships of the upper class of the time or was only a literary conceit. Prior to the development of this genre, women appear in medieval literature as secondary characters and their husbands' or fathers' possessions afterward, women feature prominently in literary works as clearly defined individuals in the works of authors such as Chretien de Troyes, Marie de France, John Gower, Geoffrey Chaucer, Christine de Pizan, Dante Alighieri, Giovanni Boccaccio, and Thomas Malory. Courtly love poetry featured a lady, usually married but always in some way inaccessible, who became the object of a noble knight's devotion, service, and self-sacrifice. Courtly Love ( Amour Courtois) refers to an innovative literary genre of poetry of the High Middle Ages (1000-1300 CE) which elevated the position of women in society and established the motifs of the romance genre recognizable in the present day.
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