Courtly Love!

[SHARK]

Greetings!

COURTLY LOVE

Courtly Love--enflamed and inspired the imagination and the human spirit during the High Middle Ages, and was developed from troubedors and knights returning from the Holy Land during the Crusades. Courtly Love grew, and was contributed to by important commentary and literature written by women, as well as men during subsequent years. Courtly Love became a multi-faceted thing--part literature, part social ideal--and perhaps, even embracing aspects of a new form of spiritual consciousness.

Courtly Love was at its core a social relationship between a noble, valiant knight--and a beautiful, noble, and glorious woman that was essentially unobtainable by the knight pursuing her, and seeking her hand and a full, consumation of their love affair. The relationship could not typically be consumated because of moral sanctions; the woman in question was typically already married, and as adultery was held to be a terrible sin, and forbidden conduct to anyone that was pious, righteous and honourable.

Punishment for adultery was typically quite dreaded, and ruthlessly swift in execution if such adultery was discovered. Knights discovered to be adulterers were usually swiftly executed by being disemboweled, or suffered some other form of agonized and ferocious death, often after long hours or days of being savagely beaten and tortured. Women that were guilty of adultery were also often executed, or condemned to spend the rest of their lives committed to a Convent, where they were made into a Nun. Nuns were female servants of the medieval Church, and forced into the strict, disciplined heirarchy of the Convent where they endured lives of absolute discipline, hard work, hyper-spirituality, and swift, severe punishment, where they were constantly supervised and controlled in every way, by the heirarchy of pious and devout nuns ranked above them, all under the leadership, discipline, and authority of the Mother Superior.

Courtly Love survived, however, and flourished, despite being constantly criticised by the medieval Church and being preached against as sinful, lascivious, and wicked. Courtly Love was increasingly developed--often by women thinkers and writers--some of whom, ironically--wrote and contributed from within the halls and isolation of the Convent. Courtly Love developed into a sort of social and spiritual consciousness, and lifestyle. Courtly Love developed and expressed entirely new ideas of how to think about relationships between all men and women--not just nobles and knights. Courtly Love promoted ideals of Chivalry, Grace, Absolute Devotion, Romantic Love, Friendship, Passion, and Beauty. Courtly Love sowed the seeds of radically redefining the goals and standards of virtually all relationships between men and women, regardless of social status, especially in regards to the ideas of romance, love, equality, and the institution of marriage.

Thus, it can easily be seen why many nobles however would feel threatened by the ideals of Courtly Love, as well as attracting the resistance and condemnation of the Medieval Church. Nonetheless, Courtly Love was embraced and supported by many younger noblemen and knights, traveling minstrels and troubedors--and by vast legions of women. It is perhaps not terribly surprising that women during the Middle Ages wildly and passionately embraced and supported the ideals of Courtly Love in every way, and at every opportunity, from all stations of life and social status--from peasant farm-girls, to professional women working in breweries, crafts, and other guilds, to women writing and speaking from Convents, and to women that were of high noble status, such as wives of powerful nobles, or their daughters, or mothers.

When it becomes clearer that even among the noblemen and priests that hated and feared the ideals of Courtly Love, that when nearly every woman around them--their own wives, their own daughters, their own sisters, and their own mothers--supported and embraced the ideals of Courtly Love, the success and growth of Courtly Love became increasingly difficult to resist. Then, of course, many young noblemen and knights--ever and always eager to gain the favour of beautiful women that they desire--fully supported and embraced the ideals of Courtly Love. The young noblemen and knights were, of course, not only influenced by the desires and even the bold commands of the women that they sought in romance--but also by the advice, teaching, admonition and influence of the other women in their lives--their mothers, sisters, aunts, and other women throughout society. The sweeping and zealous support of women from all levels of medieval society guaranteed that the ideals of Courtly Love spread like wildfire, and when it also gained the support and following of many younger men, Courtly Love became a social force that was ultimately irresistible and unstoppable.

In the light of the often typified medieval social standards of many campaigns, how might Courtly Love affect NPC's and player characters alike in the campaign?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

 

[Rechan]

I read the title as Courtney Love. I was initially confused.

SHARK, could you just combine your threads in one? Instead of having multiple threads that differ only slightly?

 

[Ed_Laprade]

Courly Love was the province of Romance writers. And a few oddballs. People who were grounded in the real world only read about it.

 

[SHARK]

I read the title as Courtney Love. I was initially confused.

SHARK, could you just combine your threads in one? Instead of having multiple threads that differ only slightly?

Greetings!

I'm sorry, Rechan.

I broke the articles up into three parts from my blog, so they wouldn't make one, huge, ginormous post here. I originally wrote the three articles--obviously related--as a single blog entry.

I honestly thought that people would prefer a post that was...a bit more bite-sized.

Again, though, Rechan, my apologies.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

 

[pawsplay]

I'm a huge fan of Love & Warr, which covers courtly love in a gaming context in some detail. One thing that stuck out was the idea of the unattainable love as a sort of M, directly or indirectly sending the PC on a variety of missions, on which the other PCs would accompany them.

 

[Trouvere]

The relationship could not typically be consumated because of moral sanctions; the woman in question was typically already married, and as adultery was held to be a terrible sin, and forbidden conduct to anyone that was pious, righteous and honourable.

It wasn't always quite as unrequited and ethereal, as evidenced by a passage from Uc de Saint Circ's vida of Bernatz de Ventadorn:

E apelava la Bernart "Alauzeta" per amor d'un cavalier que l'amava, e ella apelet lui Rai. E un jorn venc lo cavaliers a la duguessa, e entrat en la cambra. La dona que.l vi, leva adonc lo pan del mantel, e mes li sobr'al col, e laissa si cazer e leig. E Bernart vi tot, car una donzela de la domna li ac mostrat cubertamen. E per aquesta razo fez adonc la canso que dis: Quan vei l'alauzeta mover.

And Bernard called her "the Lark," because of the love of a knight who loved her, and she called him Ray. And one day the knight came to the duchess, and went into her room. The lady, when she saw him, raised the corner of her dress, lifted it up to her neck, and lay down on her bed. And Bernard saw everything, for a servant girl of the lady showed him everything in secret. And for this reason he wrote the song that goes "When I see the lark moving..."

 

[Hella_Tellah]

I read the title as Courtney Love. I was initially confused.

SHARK, could you just combine your threads in one? Instead of having multiple threads that differ only slightly?

Because courtly love, mercenaries, and attitudes toward sex are very similar topics... Keep up the good work, SHARK. All three are good threads for those of us who like setting detail and huge, Gygaxian tables.

I took a class a few years ago on the history of love in the arts, and courtly love was a pretty large portion of the course. One of the major points I got out of the class was that love has been portrayed almost exclusively as a Very Bad Thing in Western literature. Most "love stories" have been fables on the danger of falling in love and the importance of duty. One of the first works to question this was also one of the first European novels, La Princesse de Clèves by Madame de Lafayette. My professor contended that it's the earliest popular work he can find that suggests that it might be better to marry someone you love.

I've had a couple of plots revolve around this idea of the folly of youthful love versus the importance of duty, and found that my players really got into it. It's kind of fun to roleplay characters whose values are very different from those of modern, Western people, and they took to it pretty well.

 

[Rechan]

Because courtly love, mercenaries, and attitudes toward sex are very similar topics...

SHARK also did a post about Romance.

Courtly Love, Romance, and Sex in the game are all linked by the notion of love.

 

[ProfessorPain]

I read the title as Courtney Love. I was initially confused.
?

I made the same mistake.

 

[shilsen]

In the light of the often typified medieval social standards of many campaigns, how might Courtly Love affect NPC's and player characters alike in the campaign?

Nice post as usual, SHARK.

Personally, I find courtly love a fascinating concept and have studied it a fair bit (I study/teach literature and am specialized in the Renaissance), but it's not something I usually utilize in my games unless a particular player wants it to feature as part of their character concept. In my estimation, behind a thin (if often persuasive) veneer of regarding women in a more positive light, courtly love was often a highly sexist and misogynist system, and that's not something I'm really interested in having in my games. One of the big advantages to putting someone on a pedestal, as courtly love seemed to do, is that then you can keep them up there. In my games, I'd rather have women (PCs and NPCs) getting off the pedestal and doing things that they want. Which, going by the vast majority of the female players I've had, is to kick ass and take names.

I should also note here that I've never been a fan of the medieval social standards in D&D and usually find that they don't make sense at all in the particular setting, whether homebrewed or official (due to the existence of magic and demihumans, the lack of a strong central religion, etc, but that's a story for another thread). I'm much more interested in playing around with the various possibilities for unique culture(s) that a fantasy world containing D&D elements opens up, rather than replicating a particular historical moment which (I would argue) could not exist in a D&D-esque world.