Talk:Courtly love

message: "Naturally courtly love was not considered to be a matter for the commoners, who were too busy trying to survive to take part in elaborate rituals. The wealthy upper classes were those with the leisure to ponder such ideals as 'true love'."
This is elitist nonsense that should be replaced by a paragraph explaining how this particular ideal was prevalent among the upper classes without the disdainful attitude toward "commoners". Everyking 00:30, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: nonsense

message: "The first stirrings of neopaganism..."?  Sounds like it doesn't belong in that sentence.  Although this could very easily be correct, it's unsupported by any text that is succinct, credible, and sensible.
I do not urge deletion but rather support of this phrase, if it can be supported.  It should be regarded in all ways as equal to the phrase, "... first stirrings of comedia del arte ..." in the same placement, as there is no other indication of neopaganism in Christian Europe at that time, unless theatrical and poetic pleas to muses and Aphrodite are considered a deliberate, monumentally covert effort to establish neopaganism.
(-anonymous)
It's not neo-paganism, it's Paganism. If you've read The Allegory of Love you'll know what I mean. '...it was a sort of carnival in which the happier aspects of Paganism took part, after being baptized, and yet losing none of its jollity.' -C. S. Lewis. Cariel 00:04, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: neopaganism

message: Making this entry p.c. and "gender-neutral" strips it of sense. Courtly love had its origins in Aquitaine and Provence in the 11th century. William X, Eleanor of Aquitaine and her court, the Roman de la Rose...
--Wetman 18:25, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: pc

message: The new illustration is cute (German, 13th century perhaps?), but it illustrates some anti-courtly tale, such as Chaucer's Miller's Tale or some earthy stories in the Decameron. Can we get a bead on just what it is, and add a section on anti-courtly love literature: goliards, fabliaux etc? --Wetman 21:54, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: illustration

message: *The reference to Tuchman is ambiguous.  Doesn't this source need to be added to the References? soverman 7:40 23 Odt 2005 (UTC)
**Comment Yes. Done. --Malecasta 20:52, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: tuchman

message: Doesn't there seem to be a NPOV slant on this neopaganism business? The tone of the article seems to suggest that courtly love is some sort of secret underground religion... 134.186.104.253 19:52, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: neopaganism

message: Shouldn't some mention be made of the connection (posited by several important scholars like Menocal) between the appearance of courtly love in 12th century France, and the Muslim ideas of courtly love that preceeded it?  One need only look at the Andalusi Ibn Hazm's 11th century book Tawq al-Hammammah to see that notions of courtly love were well-developed in Muslim Spain, just across the Pyrenees from France. DelDav 16:57, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds like a good idea. A relevant source is Peter L. Allen, The Art of Love: Amatory Fiction from Ovid to the Romance of the Rose (Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1992). Unfortunately, I don't have time to reread it at the moment. Deor (talk) 15:49, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Muslim Influence

message: This is good and interesting, but from a literary perspective, I wonder whether the influence of Ovid is proportionally slighted. It's barely mentioned. Few people in medieval Europe could read Arabic or Persian; this is still true in the Renaissance. But almost every literate person read Latin; that was almost the definition of literacy. Ovid's influence can be traced quite concretely, in terms of the number of manuscripts in circulation, and direct references to him (often by his cognomen Naso rather than Ovidius) in medieval European literature. Courtly love is an ideal, and is most "real" in its literary form. Some poets participated in the Crusades, but more would've been home reading Latin authors.
I'm not asking to diminish the Arabic role in any way; just saying that the resulting imbalance, which almost removes Ovid from the equation, needs to be redressed. Cynwolfe (talk) 15:34, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds like a good idea. A relevant source is Peter L. Allen, The Art of Love: Amatory Fiction from Ovid to the Romance of the Rose (Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1992). Unfortunately, I don't have time to reread it at the moment. Deor (talk) 15:49, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: The article slights Ovid, however

message: NPOV dispute
The article declares that marriage was defined as sacrament in the fourth Lateran Council (1215).  However, Marriage was generally believed to be a sacrament up until then, but defined in response to heresies such as various forms of Gnosticism .  Marriage can be shown historically to have been believed a sacrament, or at least highly honored before then.  At no time in Christianity was there ever a belief otherwise, except among the Gnostics.  Marriage did not suddenly exist at the Council.
The cult of the Virgin was not instituted in the 12th century.  It was, again, formally defined in response to heresies against various Marian doctrines, which  though not defined, were believed by Christians.
I believe this article may have an Anti-Catholic or Anti-Christian slant and should be examined for balance.  It seems to say there is some secret pagan underground religion, and has the marks of an "ancient mystery religion" theory.  There is only one source, the article should be researched more.
70.41.62.198 23:35, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: (This anonymous editor, apparently not a reader of history, applied an "NPOV" label, which has been removed. They don't even bother to log in now.) --Wetman 01:18, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Errors in article 

message: Particular standards of etiquette and custom were attached to courtly love, though these varied somewhat with region and time period. Sometimes the ideal love was chaste or Platonic admiration, with no intimation of actual affairs. In other cases, at least the intention of consummation is expressed, if only to lament the impossibility of the act. This ritual of walking the knife's edge between admiration and consummation is still seen in such Western European social practices as the seating of ladies at table next to gentlemen who are specifically not their husbands. In cultures not much influenced by the courtly love tradition, this would seem to be a scandalous, insulting invitation to disaster.
This is not bad, but it's more or less "hidden" or at least buried in the middle of the article. Chastity and unattainability were not only widely declared as goals; they were often in fact successfully maintained. I've tried to correct the introduction, but the entire article needs to be rewritten to provide a less one-sided, "modern", and historically distorted interest in the cases where physical love was enjoyed despite the very widespread vows to the contrary. The article's reference to the troubadour tradition and art form (Courtly love was perhaps most commonly expressed in the compositions of the troubadours, trouvères and poets) is completely misleading and incorrect due to its emphasis on sexual intercourse. In addition, the references from many other articles such troubadour and minnesang to here are also misleading if readers then think that those art forms are (mostly) talking about sexual love. --Espoo 09:55, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I doubt that a huge amount of new evidence has been uncovered in the last ten years, or even in the last fifty.  (Of course, I'm no expert and could be wildly wrong.)   I think it's more a question of rival interpretations of what we do have.  Medieval literature was of course loaded with allegory and symbolism.  So too was medieval thought.  Different interpretations are to be expected.   -- 18.252.7.143 19:24, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  incorrect stress on and erroneous inclusion of adultery in the definition 

message: This article concentrates too heavily on the views of those who supported the ideal.  There was heavy opposition.  Goldfritha 20:05, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: One-sided

message: On first casual glance, the concepts here remind me of the Song of Solomon.  Did that work have any influence? --Davecampbell 01:00, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Does the Song of Solomon pertain? 

message: Sexual satisfaction, Paris said, may not have been a goal or even end result, but the love was not entirely Platonic either, as it was based on sexual attraction ...
This is not so much an error as it is misleading. Platonic love is based on sexual attraction, though that attraction is somehow used as a springboard toward appreciation/understanding of a higher beauty. The Phaedrus and The Symposium are the two primary sources. I notice that the Wikipedia article on Platonic Love corrects the common understanding of Platonic Love.
Teades 13:45, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Origin of Term 

message: This article already has a sub-section on "courtly literature" that is larger and more developed than the Courtly literature article. Not to say a Courtly literature article could not exist on Wikipedia, but right now, wouldn't it make more sense to focus editors attention into expanding this article, and when the literature section gets large enough, split it off into a separate article with a summary here? - the alternative is to have a content fork, with two different streams of development that will one day have to be merged with a lot more difficulty. Also, all of the professional encyclopedia articles I have seen cover courtly love and courtly literature in the same article - for good reason since courtly literature is really at the "heart" of courtly love, it's where it originated and how it most well know by and most studied. This article could use a considerably larger courtly literature section. -- Stbalbach 12:15, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I have no objection to merging courtly literature into this article. The only reason I created the article on courtly literature is that Ovid was linked to a then non-existent article on literature courtoise, and there was an equivalent article on French Wikipédia. --Kyoko 22:58, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: OK. Yeah the French are right, a separate article could be in the future, it's a big topic. Most encyclopedias discuss love and literature in the same article so it seemed best to start off that way since they are so closely connected. Thanks. -- Stbalbach 13:00, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Courtly literature]] 

message: Look at this sentence: "it is not a coincidence that the cult of the Virgin Mary began in the 12th century as a counter to the secular, courtly and lustful views of women"
Um, the "cult of the Virgin" (not cult in the sense of extremist group, but in the sense of cult (religion)) began about as soon as Christianity.  The Council of Ephesus (431 AD) announced Mary as Theotokos. The Gospel of James, while noncanonical, showed deep devotion to Mary.  This is not only NPOV slanted toward discrediting Catholics, but ust plain wrong.  Also, I think the views described for the ecclesiastics are not quite accurate - they weren't this puritanical.  That's largely a modern (last 200 years or so) myth.   I'm not sure how to fix this, tohugh.  Vultur 18:55, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: 2 points.  First - the "cult of the Virgin Mary" was a real and actual cult with that name.  Sure, there have been people with Marian devotion since day one, but that's not what the article is talking about here.  Second - I am to understand that it IS church teaching to remain celibate during marriage, but that celibate doesn't neccesarily mean no sex - just no sex outside of marriage.  Hence a person can be celibate and still have sex.  But, since that fact is not clear to the average reader, it should be clarified, which I will try to do now.(along with a few other things)Farsight001 (talk) 01:04, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  NPOV and wrong? 

message: talk about killing  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 156.34.15.49 (talk) 20:13, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  kill 

message: Don Quixote, by Cervantes. While Cervantes certainly takes the mickey out of the whole thing, there is no doubt he was debunking a very real tradition for his readers. Perhaps a manufacturered tradition, but well before Gaston Paris, at any rate.
61.49.232.130 (talk) 04:16, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Surely one of the greatest examples of courtly love was... 

message: Tuchamn does not mention "worship of the lady form afar" (or anything like that) in her outline of the stages of Courtly Love...at least not on pg.66 as stated in fotenote #25.  The paragraph on that page starts as: "The chivalric love affair moved from worship through declaration of passionate devotion, virtuous rejection by the lady, to renewed wooing...."  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.26.190.152 (talk) 20:43, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  tuchman #2 

message: As part of the historic analysis section, an addition could be made from the perspective of Bloch and his thesis (in Medieval Misogyny), which basically looks at courtly love as a another dimension of control and subversion to women, it keeps them distracted by their elevation.  Thekappen (talk) 10:33, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Possible Addition to the "Analysis" section 

message: Hmmm, I think the islamic influence section is wrong, and it certainly suffers from a pro islamic POV. It calls Ibn Sina a "psychologist", but seriously, can we honestly call an 11th century phillosopher who talked about the mind, a psychologist? It´s absolutely ridiculous, ludicrous. It´s Presentism at its best.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 186.52.3.162 (talk) 21:43, 24 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Islamic influence? 

message: I realize it is popular to ascribe the origins of the phrase to Gaston Paris, but that is false and the article needs to be corrected on this point. Gaston Paris may have popularised the term but it is found in French literature dating back centuries before him. Even in English writings and poetry we find references from long before Paris's use - eg. this poem from the Westmorland Gazette - Saturday 28 December 1822;
:Sometimes his proud green waves, in order set,
::One after the other flow onto the shore,
:Which when they have with many kisses wet,
::They ebb again in order as before;
:And to make known his courtly love the more,
::He oft doth lay aside his three-fork'd mace,
:And with his arms the tim'rous earth embrace
124.170.113.245 (talk) 23:36, 19 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Origin of the term "Courtly Love" 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I changed the headline of the paragraph "Courtly love as a response to Canon Law" to "Courtly love as a response to theologic discourse about love", because the text below does not speak about Canon Law but about the theologic ideas about love. One could however talk about canon law, but that would necessarily have to include the controversy about marriage, which is a much more discussed topic in canon law than love itself, which is hardly discussed at all. Also the said paragraph uses the terms "Church" and "Catholoic church" problematically in my eyes, since it seems like a over generalization to just talk about the ideas "of the Church" as if there was no controversy on topics. Cyndalorsa (talk) 09:14, 11 March 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Canon Law