Courtly love was the culture around the performance of love at court, that was derived originally from the world of the southern French troubadours and tales about Lancelot and his devotion to Arthur's wife Guinevere. Courtly love was never about love between a married couple, but always about a transgressive love in which the man (the lover) was filled with painful longing for an unattainable beloved (his mistress). He pledged to be her servant and dedicated his time to her service, to giving her gifts, writing her poetry, singing her songs, all in the face of her implacable auteur, resistance, and occasional kindness to him. It was not — in theory — a love that manifested itself in physical intimacy. By Henry VIII's day, it had become a game played at court to entertain bored courtiers; a cultural code that produced entertainments such as tournaments and pageants, and a set of guidelines that trammeled male-female interaction at the court.
Professor Suzannah Lipscomb, "The Love Letters of Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn"
, Not Just the Tudors
, Not Just the Tudors"I say William Shakespeare had the right idea—
Put your passion in a poem she won't hear."
Put your passion in a poem she won't hear."
— Honest Bob and the Factory-to-Dealer Incentives, "I Get By"
...little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honour, and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever. Never, never more shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom.
— Edmund Burke, "Reflections on the French Revolution"
All I’m saying is that our modern conception of hopeless romance, of the tormented lover pining away in the night, striving to become worthy of the unattainable beloved, is based on a ridiculous, outdated, socially motivated code of behavior that was invented at a time when marriages were business mergers and adultery carried the god damn death penalty. And I get that it feels good to feel bad, to experience the exquisite pain of loving somebody you know you can never be with. I’ve done it loads of times, and I got some great poetry out of it. Just, for God’s sake, don’t pretend like your secret pain has a noble lineage.
