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Courtly love (Occitan: fin'amor; French: amour courtois [amuʁ kuʁtwa]) was a medieval European literary conception of love that emphasized nobility and chivalry. Medieval literature is filled with examples of knights setting out on adventures and performing various deeds or services for ladies because of their "courtly love".
It was practised in the 12th and 13th centuries. Thematically, as its name implies, it was a song of courtly love, written usually by a man to his noble lover. Some later chansons were polyphonic and some had refrains and were called chansons avec des refrains.
The themes of love were, however, to soon appear, particularly in the Matter of Britain, leading to even the French regarding King Arthur's court as the exemplar of true and noble love, so much so that even the earliest writers about courtly love would claim it had reached its true excellence there, and love was not what it was in King Arthur's ...
Petrarch's obsessive feelings toward Laura fit remarkably well under the title courtly love. This love is a way to explain his erotic desire and spiritual aspiration. Shakespeare, similarly to Petrarch, shows an eroticized love to the fair youth, a love that also fits nicely under pretense of courtly love.
The lyric poetry of Europe in this period was created by the pioneers of courtly poetry and courtly love largely without reference to the classical past. [11] The troubadors, travelling composers and performers of songs, began to flourish towards the end of the 11th century and were often imitated in successive centuries.
Poetry took numerous forms in medieval Europe, for example, lyric and epic poetry. The troubadours, trouvères, and the minnesänger are known for composing their lyric poetry about courtly love usually accompanied by an instrument. [1] Among the most famous of secular poetry is Carmina Burana, a manuscript collection of 254 poems.
The 12th-century book The Art of Courtly Love advised that "True love can have no place between husband and wife". [5] According to one view, clandestine meetings between men and women, generally outside of marriage or before marriage, were the precursors to today's courtship. [5]
The Châtelaine de Vergy tells the story of an unnamed knight in the service of the Duke of Burgundy who is the lover of the Châtelaine of Vergy, the Duke's niece. The Châtelaine has accepted this knight's love on one condition: that he must keep their relationship secret from everyone, and that when he comes to visit her, he must wait for her little dog to come out to him in the garden ...