The Art of Courtly Love

Rating:
Summary: Excellent background for Middle Ages history buffs.
Review: A series of dialogues between men and women of various social ranks concerning why love should be accepted or rejected, written during the Middle Ages. There are other bits, such as Courts of Love and long letters written to this or that person, but that's mostly it.

I found it an interesting read. You hear a lot about "courtly love", but nobody really talks about the underpinnings of the tradition. Since the writer was a monk, one truly wonders just what in the world he knows about love, but upon reading the dialogues, one becomes convinced that this isn't about love. It's about social behavior within a certain context, within a very narrow time frame within a very narrow part of Europe, one indulged in by a very narrow group of people. And yet when we think of the Middle Ages, we think of courtly love. There's a reason for that, and reading this book will help the introspective reader see why.

The 5 stars were for how it stands as a primary source documenting the period. It is excellent in that regard. It does drag sometimes, and many of the dialogues are, indeed, repetitive-sounding. But that's how medieval documents WERE. They wanted to be sure the point got across, I think. I'm also half-convinced that the writer wasn't being entirely serious in some places. Again, he was a monk, and it's possible it was just an exercise in logic, as the forward to this book explains in good detail.

I'm not sure I'd want to read this if I were just a casual reader. It won't give many hints about how to romance someone in OUR time period -- nowadays we like passion, not logic, to be the impetus for beginning a love affair. But it will give the history student something to chew on and I think it's an essential piece of understanding one of the weirder aspects of the Middle Ages.

Rating:
Summary: How Capellanus reshaped romance...
Review: Andreas Capellanus, chaplain at the court of Countess Marie de Champagne, daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine, wrote this treatise on courtly love in the 12th century--ostensibly to educate a friend--and thus set a new standard for lovers. Capellanus' work may have been intended as a satirical reworking of Ovid's Ars Amatoria, or it might have been influenced by the Arabic views of love in The Dove's Neck-Ring by Ibn Hazm a Mozarabic writer of the 11th century. Whatever his intent, his work, The Art of Courtly Love, influenced the aristocracy's ideas of social relationships, and the portrayal of male-female roles in romantic literature, well into the Renaissance. In a series of conversational examples between men and women of various classes together with a list of rules of love, Capellanus draws distinctions between the relationship of marriage and the relations between true lovers. Within the context of courtly love the true lover is required to pay homage to and do the bidding of his ladylove above all else. True love according to Capellanus does not exist between husband and wife, but is a state sought by all outside of the marriage bed. He states, attributing the sentiment to "M., Countess of Champagne", that "Love cannot acknowledge any rights of his between husband and wife". This attitude is understandable in a society where marriages were contracted for position and fortune.

In one of the sets of rules for lovers set forth by Capellanus he states that "No one should be deprived of love without the very best of reasons". This would justify romantic relationships of which women were otherwise deprived. Before modern times, love was rarely a factor in choosing a spouse, and yet it is perhaps the strongest force that drives mankind. Capellanus both acknowledges and rationalizes the power love holds over men and women alike. The path to true love is never easy, and the rules of courtly love would have it that where there is love there, too, is suffering. It is by his great distress that the beloved can see how greatly the lover loves. Although love that suffers chastely and from afar is held in esteem, Capellanus also says that kisses and embraces are "indications that love is to follow" and should not be overdone if the lover is not sincere. This seems to acknowledge the human need for sexual action to follow seduction. Appropriate action with gifts and flattery is described by Capellanus in his dialogs for seducing the beloved. Care must be taken in the choice of gifts, since by the rules of courtly love exchange of valuable objects debases the relationship and lovers may only accept those "little gifts" "useful for the care of the person" or "pleasing to look at" as long as there is no "avarice" involved. This rule led to the carrying by knights of tokens or "favors"--gifts of their ladies--in tournaments throughout the Middle Ages. Seduction has four steps according to Capellanus: first should come the offer of service (or if by a lady the giving of hope to the suitor), followed by the granting of kisses and the embrace--in which a couple may even lie down together nude, having no actual sexual congress, with no blame attached. If the final fourth step is taken, yielding to sexual relations, the lover is committed and can not withdraw from the relationship with honor for any less reason than a seriously dishonorable action on the part of his or her partner. These elements of courtly love appear again and again in literature of the Middle Ages from Chaucer's "Knight's Tale" to Malory's Morte D'Arthur.

Perhaps the most interesting influence in Capellanus' life is that of Eleanor of Aquitaine, queen of England and wife to King Henry II. Eleanor was already instrumental in the production of early courtly romances, especially the Arthurian tales. Wace dedicated his "Brut" to her, Thomas of Britian wrote his "Tristram" at her instigation and Chretien de Troyes wrote his Lancelot romances from material given him by her daughter Marie. Eleanor's life reads much like one of these romances. Duchess of Aquitaine, she married Louis, the king of France, at a young age, and produced two daughters Marie and Alix. She met Henry II, six years her junior, before he became king of England and then divorced Louis, on a consanguinarity technicality, to marry him. The rumor was that she and Henry, like Lancelot and Guinevere, met secretly while she was still legally married to Louis. When Henry later tired of her she again took up regency of the Aquitaine for her son Richard, and with her daughter Marie held liberal and literary courts where troubadours sang and courtiers waited upon ladies. Together Eleanor and Marie set a standard of chivalrous manners that changed the behavior of all knighthood. As a pastime these highborn ladies held "courts of love" wherein they tested the behavior of lovers, by the standards set in Capellanus' treatise, vindicating those they found to be "true lovers" and pronouncing penances for those found lacking. If not for the influence of the strong minded Marie de Champagne and the formidable Eleanor--women who wanted more of love than the usual marriage of convenience--Capellanus might have been relegated to the obscurity of the Church's proscribed text list, and our standards of romance might be very different today.

Rating:
Summary: Its not about love, its about behavior
Review: I bought this as research material for codes of conduct. The feel of the book shows the writers background in the clergy, the book focuses more on the traditional courting behavior than on love itself. Its wonderful as a complex example of a code of conduct, but sheds little light in the direction of true relationships. Very interesting as a period piece, its seems to be more reflective of the romantic visions of the middle ages than the reality.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting look at medieval manners and customs
Review: This is a must read if you are at all interested in medieval life. Aside from being the premiere treatise on "courtly love," there are interesting historical issues raised by this book.

For example, in the section "What persons are fit for love," Capellanus says that "Age is a bar, because after the sixtieth year in a man and the fiftieth in a woman...passion cannot develop into love..." The conventional wisdom holds that most people did not live much past 40 in those days. Evidently Capellanus ran across a few people in their 50s and 60s, in addition to his encounters with nuns. (You will have to read the book to find out more)

Rating:
Summary: Interesting look at medieval manners and customs
Review: This is a must read if you are at all interested in medieval life. Aside from being the premiere treatise on "courtly love," there are interesting historical issues raised by this book.

For example, in the section "What persons are fit for love," Capellanus says that "Age is a bar, because after the sixtieth year in a man and the fiftieth in a woman...passion cannot develop into love..." The conventional wisdom holds that most people did not live much past 40 in those days. Evidently Capellanus ran across a few people in their 50s and 60s, in addition to his encounters with nuns. (You will have to read the book to find out more)