1. Rules for your medieval crushes
Courtly Love
Rules for your medieval crushes

2. What Is “Courtly Love?” Courtly love originated in Aquitaine (France)
It applied to nobility (kings, lords, knights, etc.) rather than peasants
Nobility typically married for power/wealth (not love)
Courtly love allows for crushes and flirting
MUST be chaste
Typically involved writing love letters and poems, holding hands, and dancing
NOT healthy/real love as we know now; this is infatuation/“puppy love”
N/B: The term “lover” is different from how we use it. There is no cheating involved in courtly love; your lover is simply the person you’re in love with, not someone you have grown-up relations with.

3. Rules about Relationships:
Marriage is no excuse for not loving.
No one can be bound by “double love.”
When one lover dies, the other must behave like a widow/widower for at least 2 years.
It is improper to love a woman you would be ashamed to marry.
Public love rarely endures.
A real lover can never have enough solaces with his beloved.
Nothing forbids a woman from being loved by 2 men or a man by 2 women.

4. Rules about Jealousy He who is not jealous cannot love.
A true lover has no desire to embrace in love anyone other than his beloved.
A new love puts to flight an old one.
A man in love is always apprehensive.
Real jealousy increases the feelings of love.

5. Standards for Lovers
Boys cannot truly love until they reach the age of maturity.
Every lover turns pale in the presence of his beloved.
When a lover catches sight of his beloved, the heart palpitates.
No one should be deprived of love without the very best of reasons.
Good character alone makes a man worthy of love.
Someone in love eats and sleeps very little.
A true lover is constantly consumed by thoughts of his beloved.
A man vexed by too much passion cannot truly love.
Love is a stranger in the home of the greedy.

6. Standards on How to Love
Love should only increase (<) never decrease (>).
That which a lover takes against the will of his beloved has no relish.
True love considers nothing good other than what would please his beloved.
Easy attainment of love gives it little value; difficult attainment of love is prized.
Love denies nothing to love.

7. Stages of Courtly Love in Literature
Attraction to the lady, usually via eyes/glance
Worship of the lady from afar
Declaration of passionate devotion
Virtuous rejection by the lady
Renewed wooing with oaths of virtue and eternal fealty
Moans of approaching death from unsatisfied desire (and other physical manifestations of lovesickness)
Heroic deeds of valor which win the lady's heart
Consummation of the secret love (kisses, gifts, scandal???)
Endless adventures and subterfuges avoiding detection

8. Our Readings: “The Lady of Shalott” by Alfred Lord Tennyson
Is the lady’s love for Lancelot courtly?
Sir Gawain & the Green Knight (author anonymous, J.R.R. Tolkien translation)
Is Gawain chivalrous?
What is the extent of love between Gawain and the lady of the castle?