Courtly love

Abstract

‘Courtly love’ is an anachronistic, portmanteau designation for a remarkably heterogeneous literary phenomenon that, from the middle of the twelfth century onward, placed important emphasis on the intersection of chivalric acts and amorous pursuits. While there is some evidence that the theories and representations of love popularized in what has come to be termed courtly literature eventually made their way into social practice in the form of elaborate jeu de société, there is no reason to believe that these conceptions of love represent the lived, historical reality of the French Middle Ages. The expression ‘courtly love’, or amour courtois in French, was first popularized by Gaston Paris in his 1883 study of Chrétien de Troyes’s Lancelot ou le Chevalier de la charrette (c.1178). Chrétien romances, with their questing knights and their imprisoned ladies, have come to represent the concept of courtly love although they constitute only one strain of a diverse literary tradition.