Courtly Love: Similarities And Differences

Overview of ‘Courtly Love’

Courtly love, also called fins amors or refined love, is a notion of love which has no affiliation with marriage. This does not mean married people were excluded from courtly love; they just experienced it with someone outside their marriage. The concept was first introduced in medieval literature, but it eventually caught on in the royal courts.

Courtly love was all about romance (the cheesier the better), but sexual contact typically had nothing to do with it which is reflective of the modesty demonstrated at these certain periods in time. In medieval courts, the term 'lover' referred to the person with whom someone danced, giggled, and held hands-procreation was a spousal duty. To do otherwise was to break the rules of etiquette.

Differences between courtly love and taking a Spouse:

There was no official 'code' in the medieval times; it was a term that was coined in later years to describe the common behavioural attributes that proper knights possessed not only on the fields of battle, but in court also. Nowadays, the term is primarily used to describe the ways knights were expected to behave towards ladies of nobility; they did not apply to peasant women.

Medieval literature includes several examples of courtly love. Sir Lancelot expresses this kind of love for Lady Guinevere in Arthurian legend, though he breaks the rules and takes Guinevere for his own. In Geoffrey Chaucer's The Knight's Tale, this type of love is depicted. Many poets also dedicated their writing to noble ladies in acts of courtly love, such as Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, which he dedicated to Queen Elizabeth I. The poem depicts the Redcrosse knight's courtly love for the lady, Una. He protects her and professes to love her, while always behaving with the most chivalrous