Editing Courtly love (section)

==Literary convention==

The literary convention of courtly love can be found in most of the major authors of the Middle Ages, such as [[Geoffrey Chaucer]], [[John Gower]], [[Dante]], [[Marie de France]], [[Chretien de Troyes]], [[Gottfried von Strassburg]] and [[Sir Thomas Malory|Thomas Malory]]. The medieval [[genres]] in which courtly love conventions can be found include the [[lyric poetry|lyric]], the [[Romance (heroic literature)|romance]] and the [[allegory]].

===Lyric===
Courtly love was born in the lyric, first appearing with Provençal poets in the 11th century, including itinerant and courtly [[minstrels]] such as the French troubadours and [[trouvère]]s, as well as the writers of lays. Texts about courtly love, including lays, were often set to music by troubadours or minstrels. According to scholar Ardis Butterfield, courtly love is "the air which many genres of troubadour song breathe".<ref>Butterfield, Ardis. "Vernacular poetry and music". ''[[Cambridge Companions to Music|Cambridge Companion to Medieval Music]]''. Ed. Mark Everist. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. 209.</ref>  Not much is known about how, when, where, and for whom these pieces were performed, but we can infer that the pieces were performed at court by troubadours, trouvères, or the courtiers themselves. This can be inferred because people at court were encouraged or expected to be "courtly" and be proficient in many different areas, including music. Several troubadours became extremely wealthy playing the fiddle and singing their songs about courtly love for a courtly audience.

It is difficult to know how and when these songs were performed because most of the information on these topics is provided in the music itself. One lay, the "Lay of Lecheor", says that after a lay was composed, "Then the lay was preserved / Until it was known everywhere / For those who were skilled musicians / On viol, harp and rote / Carried it forth from that region…"<ref>Burgess, Glyn S.. "C'est le Lay dou Lecheor."
''Three old French narrative lays: Trot, Lecheor, Nabaret''. Liverpool: University of Liverpool, Department of French, 1999. 67.</ref> Scholars have to then decide whether to take this description as truth or fiction.

Period examples of performance practice, of which there are few, show a quiet scene with a household servant performing for the king or lord and a few other people, usually unaccompanied. According to scholar Christopher Page, whether or not a piece was accompanied depended on the availability of instruments and people to accompany—in a courtly setting.<ref>{{cite book |last=Page |first=Christopher |title=Voices and Instruments of the Middle Ages |location=London |publisher=J. M. Dent & Sons |year=1987 |isbn=0-460-04607-1 }}</ref> For troubadours or minstrels, pieces were often accompanied by fiddle, also called a [[vielle]], or a [[harp]]. Courtly musicians also played the vielle and the harp, as well as different types of [[viol]]s and [[flute]]s.

This French tradition spread later to the German [[Minnesänger]], such as [[Walther von der Vogelweide]] and [[Wolfram von Eschenbach]].{{sfn|Boase|Bornstein|1983}} It also influenced the [[Sicilian School]] of Italian vernacular poetry, as well as [[Petrarch]] and [[Dante]].<ref>Dorothy Sayers trans, ''Dante:Purgatory'' (1971) p. 260 and 279</ref>

===Romance===
[[File:Sir Launcelot greets Queen Guinevere.png|thumb|upright|[[Lancelot]] and [[Guinevere]] in [[Howard Pyle]]'s illustration for ''[[The Story of the Champions of the Round Table]]'' (1905)]]

The vernacular poetry of the {{lang|fr|romans courtois}}, or [[Romance (heroic literature)|courtly romances]], included many examples of courtly love. Some of them are set within the cycle of poems celebrating [[King Arthur]]'s court. This was a literature of leisure, directed to a largely female audience for the first time in European history.{{sfn|Boase|Bornstein|1983}}

===Allegory===
{{main|Allegory in the Middle Ages}}

Allegory is common in the romantic literature of the Middle Ages, and it was often used to interpret what was already written. There is a strong connection between religious imagery and human sexual love in medieval writings.

The tradition of medieval allegory began in part with the interpretation of the [[Song of Songs]] in the Bible. Some medieval writers thought that the book should be taken literally as an erotic text; others believed that the Song of Songs was a metaphor for the relationship between Christ and the church and that the book could not even exist without that as its metaphorical meaning. Still others claimed that the book was written literally about sex but that this meaning must be "superseded by meanings related to Christ, to the church and to the individual Christian soul".<ref>{{cite journal |first=Mary |last=Dove |title=Sex, Allegory and Censorship: A Reconsideration of Medieval Commentaries on the Song of Songs |journal=Literature and Theology |volume=10 |issue=4 |year=1996 |pages=317, 319–320 |doi=10.1093/litthe/10.4.317 }}</ref>

Marie de France's [[Lais of Marie de France|lai]] "[[Eliduc]]" toys with the idea that human romantic love is a symbol for God's love when two people love each other so fully and completely that they leave each other for God, separating and moving to different religious environments.<ref name="Potkay, 135">{{cite journal |first=Monica Brzezinsky |last=Potkay |title=The Limits of Romantic Allegory in Marie de France's ''Eliduc'' |journal=Medieval Perspectives |volume=9 |year=1994 |pages=135 |doi= }}</ref> Furthermore, the main character's first wife leaves her husband and becomes a nun so that he can marry his new lover.<ref name="Potkay, 135" />

Allegorical treatment of courtly love is also found in the ''[[Roman de la Rose]]'' by [[Guillaume de Lorris]] and [[Jean de Meun]].<ref name=Walters>{{cite web |first=Lori J. |last=Walters |title=History and Summary of the Text |website=Digital Library of Medieval Manuscripts |url=https://dlmm.library.jhu.edu/en/romandelarose/rose-summary/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230521033310/https://dlmm.library.jhu.edu/en/romandelarose/rose-summary/ |archive-date=May 21, 2023}}</ref> In it, a man becomes enamored with an individual rose on a rosebush, attempting to pick it and finally succeeding. The rose represents the female body, but the romance also contains lengthy digressive "discussions on free will versus determinism as well as on optics and the influence of heavenly bodies on human behavior".<ref name="Walters" />

==={{lang|pro|Midons}}===
Courtly love in [[troubadour]] poetry is associated with the word {{lang|pro|midons}}.{{sfn|Lewis|1936}}{{sfn|Boase|Bornstein|1983}} {{lang|pro|Midons}} comes from the [[Latin]] phrase "my lord", {{wikt-lang|la|mihi}} {{wikt-lang|la|dominus}}.{{sfn|Monson|2007}} The {{lang|la|mi}} part is alternatively interpreted as coming from {{wikt-lang|la|meus}}{{sfn|Monson|2007}} or {{lang|la|mia}}, though the meaning is unchanged regardless.{{sfn|Bogin|1980|p=50}}

Troubadours beginning with [[William IX, Duke of Aquitaine|Guilhem de Poitou]]{{sfn|Bogin|1980|pp=49–50}} would address the lady as {{lang|pro|midons}}, flattering her by addressing her as his lord and also serving as an ambiguous code-name.{{sfn|Boase|Bornstein|1983}}

{{blockquote|By refusing to disclose his lady's name, the troubadour permitted every woman in the audience, notably the patron's wife, to think that it was she; then, besides making her the object of a secret passion—it was ''always'' covert romance—by making her his lord he flashed her an aggrandized image of herself. She was more than "just" a woman: She was a man.
|author=Meg Bogin{{sfn|Bogin|1980|pp=49–50}}
}}

These points of multiple meaning and ambiguity facilitated a "coquetry of class", allowing the male troubadours to use the images of women as a means to gain social status with other men, but simultaneously, Bogin suggests, voiced deeper longings for the audience: "In this way, the sexual expressed the social and the social the sexual; and in the poetry of courtly love the static hierarchy of feudalism was uprooted and transformed to express a world of motion and transformation."{{sfn|Bogin|1980|p=56}}

===Later influence===
Through such routes as Capellanus's record of the Courts of Love<ref>Helen Waddell, ''The Wandering Scholars'' (1968) p. 311</ref> and the later works of [[Philosophy of love#Petrarchism|Petrarchism]] (as well as the continuing influence of Ovid),{{sfn|Boase|Bornstein|1983}} the themes of courtly love were not confined to the medieval, but appear both in serious and comic forms in early modern Europe. Shakespeare's ''[[Romeo and Juliet]]'', for example, shows Romeo attempting to love Rosaline in an almost contrived courtly fashion while Mercutio mocks him for it; and both in his plays and his sonnets the writer can be seen appropriating the conventions of courtly love for his own ends.<ref>William C. Carroll ed., ''The Two Gentlemen of Verona'' (2004) p. 31</ref>

[[Paul Gallico]]'s 1939 novel ''[[The Adventures of Hiram Holliday]]'' depicts a Romantic modern American consciously seeking to model himself on the ideal medieval knight. Among other things, when finding himself in Austria in the aftermath of the [[Anschluss]], he saves a [[Habsburg]] princess who is threatened by the Nazis, acts towards her in strict accordance with the maxims of courtly love and finally wins her after fighting a duel with her aristocratic betrothed.