Courtly Love

The Troubador poems are all about courtly love.  Take You’ve Asked my Lords for Song, by Ventadorn for example.  This poem is about a man who loves another man’s wife.   A big part of courtly love is that the writer is often far away from the beloved.  For example Ventadorn says, “I can’t so much as tell if she fares ill or well”.  The reason for this is because he cannot see her because she is in a place where he has no access.  The poem Love Afar by Jaufre Rudel is probably the best example of this distance.  Every other line ends with the word a far.  “She’s so far”, “lands so far”.  This distance between the lover and the beloved is what makes the beloved more attractive because the lover can’t be with them.   Another good example of courtly love is found in The Nothing Song.  This is a poem that Guillem De Peiteus wrote while asleep on a horse about a girl who he has never seen before, however his “love’s strong”.  I think the definition of courtly love is being in love with somebody that is far away that you know you will never be able to have.   It is a pretty ridiculous thing. Rudell says how he would “gladly lie, at [his beloved’s] command” and in reality this woman probably has no idea who he is.   Another big aspect of courtly love involves the one who is in love lowering himself to a status way below that of the beloved.    In You’ve Asked my Lords for Song, Ventadorn is “Yielding himself to [his beloved]”.  It is very strange that a man would debase himself like that.  I think it all goes back to the distance.  It is the distance that makes the love so much greater because the beloved gets over-hyped and is made to seem more perfect than she probably truly is.  In courtly love it is almost as if loving someone from a far is just as satisfying as the person actually being there.