Contributions to Psychohistory: XVI. A Response about Courtly Love

Abstract

The authors surveyed the importance of Andrew's rules of courtly courtesy to evaluate a potential lover. The authors chose to capture what they interpreted as the tone of Andrew's items. Their scale should be seen as adaptation rather than as literal translation. Despite differences between the authors' adaptation and Parry's literal translation, scale scores for the two versions correlated significantly. Tables report amount of agreement in the direction of courtly love; notes in the tables show which items were reverse scored. Because this was a pilot survey, consistency of agreement to individual items was perceived as essential. Across several administrations of the questionnaire, at least 75% agreement with eight of Andrew's 11 courtesy commandments was found. Factor analysis yielded three factors: social discretion, social chivalry, and personal generosity. To develop an instrument for experimental purposes, however, each of the factors would need to be measured by multiple items. Such an effort would appear worthwhile given the relative lack of available measures of courtesy and the importance subjects placed on courtesy to evaluate potential lovers. Finally, additional research directions were suggested.