The Immortality of 'Courtly Love' in Art, Poetry, and Culture

In a nutshell, courtly love is considered to be a forbidden love between a knight and a noblewoman in a royal court. It is a historical concept/ trope/ phenomenon in art and literature, most closely associated with the medieval period.

Common Elements: The lovers have sworn duties of servitude to their Kingdom - the knight as a protector and soldier; the noblewoman as a figure of a powerful (often royal) family and institution. Traditionally, both are also members of a religion that their court rules by. Knights usually swear an oath of chastity and must remain unwed and ladies of the court are obligated to marry noblemen.

'The Franklin's Tale' 1400, The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer.

Throughout history it's been controversial as you can imagine. It portrays love, premarital flirtations, and ideas of adultery within the highest seats of power and religious example. Chaucer satirised the idealisation of courtly love by presenting the institution of marriage as something a heroic protagonist would take part in, and courtly love, a villain's domain.

The modern arguments surrounding courtly love as a literary trope can echo the gendered arguments around the concept of chivalry in more recent decades: are some ideas of chivalry out of date and sexist? Is the practice of honest and selfless chivalry truly dead? Was chivalry ever truly selfless and loving or just a common performative convention?

However as an expression of forbidden love that accompanies themes of duty, honour, risk, and devotion, courtly romances have been prominent in art and literature as far back as the Roman Empire (Ovid's Ars Amatoria in 2AD). Constantly repeated and reproduced throughout time and place, one thing is clear, we continue to be drawn to it. We are fascinated by tales of human emotion transcending societal structures. In this case: the boundaries that surround class and the freedoms of women.

The term 'courtly love' (amour courtois) was specifically derived from 'an innovative literary genre of poetry of the High Middle Ages (1000-1300 CE) which elevated the position of women in society and established the motifs of the romance genre recognizable in the present day.' - Joshua J. Mark, World History Encyclopedia

It is one of the earliest genres that centred, let alone featured, female autonomy - operating against a rigid system of politics and power.

Similarly, courtly love personified knights with their own feelings and minds, defining them as more than a common-born body expendable to Lords and Kings.

All in the name of love, how romantic!

The Codex Manesse

Codex Manesse, Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek.

The Codex Manesse, compiled between 1304 and 1340, is an illustrated German poetry book (a Liederhandschrift). It shows off an impressive sample of courtly love-themed songs and art from the period.

Lancelot and Guinevere

The most famous, timeless, recognised, and reproduced story of courtly love in the western world is of course Lancelot and Guinevere from English Arthurian legend.

Courtly Love in Later Periods

These examples are notably still studied in schools and universities.

Sometimes exploring darker and more doomed variations on the theme, post-medieval art and poetry further delved into courtly love. Famous examples include: Faerie Queene Edmund Spenser 1590, La Belle Dame sans Merci John Keats 1819, Lady of Shalott Alfred Lord Tennyson 1833, and paintings by Frank Dicksee such as Chivalry 1885 and The End of a Quest 1921. Poet and artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, founder of the Pre-Raphaelite movement in 1848, often explored the dynamic and aesthetic of knights and their lovers in his work too.

Artist Edmund Blair Leighton (1852- 1922) painted courtly love almost exclusively. His imagery is perhaps referred to the most in today's discourse of courtly love for its brilliance at capturing the specific romance of the genre.

Still alive and kicking!

Today, courtly love is still seen on the page, stage, and screen. The trope remains intact in historical dramas like BBC's The Musketeers and HBO's House of the Dragon.

Equally, its formula has been successfully replicated into a very specific modern day idea. Films like First Daughter (about a President's daughter and her undercover agent), The Bodyguard (about a singer and her security man), and the BBC series Bodyguard (about a politician and her protection officer) parallel positions of a noblewoman and her knight to produce the courtly love dynamic.