Foolish Expectations? Or Something Else? -Elizabeth

Some of the rules from Capellanus’ Art of Courtly Love really surprised me. At least they did, before I was made aware it had been a satirical reading. For example the concept that a born-blind man can never love is simply absurd. Love is not something that relies purely on sight, for it is an emotion that is also created through interactions, trust, and understanding.

The rules “he who is not jealous cannot love” and “real jealousy always increases the feeling of love” are ridiculous to me due to the fact distrust, fear, and being overly possessive (often the sources of jealousy) can prevent communication and are well known factors of what can end a relationship. It’s a shame that so many people, for so long, took these ideas seriously. For ideas like these could do so much harm emotionally, or worse, if taken as facts.

I interpreted what courtly love was by comparing it to modern fictional love, through a few common elements: through their goals, target people, social acceptance levels, and women-rights of the time. For example, some of the goals for the creation of courtly love was to entertain, teach younger men proper social etiquette, and provide women with a small feeling of power/status during an age where women were powerless and often looked down upon.

The targets of courtly love were often portrayed as (upper-class) married women and young men (knights), for the idea of love within marriage was an odd, if not deplored, notion due to their current religious beliefs. Courtly love itself encouraged men to desire, respect, and protect women rather than just sexually pursue/interact with them. In other words, it shifted some power from the male lover to the female beloved.

Compared to modern fictional love, these elements vary quite a bit in some areas. While it is similar in the fact some of the goals are to entertain and set social standards (to a degree), what is different is the status/rights of the female audience and how they’re influenced. In terms of the woman-rights of the female audience, woman have become closer than ever, if not are already, to being on equal standing with men, and as a result do not focus as much on a need for higher status/power in modern fictional romances. Instead, they crave more the emotional fulfillment, the desire, the lust, the passion from stories, which they often cannot find in real life (similar to what the male position in courtly love offered, but with more accepted sexual relations).

Modern fictional love has more equal treatment and expectations between the sexes, unlike courtly love, which was just beginning to close the gap. The targets for this modern love are practically anyone and anything, with the general exception of incestuous relations, because the social acceptance of ‘love’ (both in the church and public) has increased greatly since the origins of courtly love. Along with greater acceptance, love within marriages became not only socially okay, but desired and sought for too. This modern shift in genre transformed the conception of courtly love, one of purely mental desire and service, to a form of love that needs both an emotional and physical connection to be content.

I wonder though, was this shift in fictional ‘love’ types mainly the result of a change in audience over the years? Or did the created shift in fiction (starting with courtly love) actually succeed in changing the beliefs/expectations of its audience, over time eventually snowballing into this current version of modern fictional love?