Tuesday, March 23, 2010
C
I personally feel that courtly love is an illegitimate form of love. People may think that it is legitimate because they feel that that is the way someone should be treated by their lover. I feel that courtly love was more of a way to express your fondness towards the other person, not necessarily true love. Back then, courtly love was used to express lust and it was a set of guidelines on how to treat another person, that was not necessarily your spouse, but that you felt lust for. Love on the other hand can contain some aspects of courtly love, however I strongly feel that they do not mean the same thing. Love is more of a passionate affection for another person where as courtly love is the polite treatment of someone you have an affair with. Comparing it with an example from today's society, it would be like someone cheating on their spouse. They might still love their spouse, but they feel the need to sleep with another person who they do not necessarily love. This does not mean that they will leave their spouse. Courtly love, in this case is simple how they would treat the person they are having an affair with.
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I agree with your opinion that in courtly love the images of spose and beloved are not one and the same. This is probably one of the biggest differences that we find between the standards of our era and that of the courtly love period.
ReplyDeleteI think that a person who is truly in love with someone else should not feel the need to go off and sleep with another person. If they felt true love then that person ideally wouldn't be attracted to another person. However, I agree that courtly love and true love are different things. I just think your example is a little flawed.
ReplyDeletei agree with everything that you say except the example you give on modern 'courtly love', i believe that the reason people have affairs in the first place is because they no longer love their spouse or partner, but no not know, or have the heart to break up with them because they still care for them.
ReplyDeletei agree with what you say about courtly love not being a legitimate form of love, however i dont agree with what you say about an affair being an example of modern courtly love. in traditional courtly love, the knight would be at the beck and call of the woman, constantly flattering her and doing nice things. while courtly love was widely accepted in that time, affairs today are generally frowned upon.
ReplyDeleteYour objection to courtly love seems to stem from the fact that it happens out of wedlock. Are you saying that true love can only happen between husband and wife? Boyfriend and girl friend? This seems a little narrow. Isn't the real test of true love one's behavior toward the other? If so, why is courtly love, which is obsessed with thinking of the other person's feelings, something more than mere lust?
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