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Courtly love (or ''fin'amor'' in Occitan) was a medieval European literary conception of love that emphasized nobility and chivalry. Medieval literature is filled with examples of knights setting out on adventures and performing various services for ladies because of their "courtly love". This kind of love is originally a literary fiction created for the entertainment of the nobility, but as time passed, these ideas about love changed and attracted a larger audience. In the high Middle Ages a "game of love" developed around these ideas as a set of social practices. "Loving nobly" was considered to be an enriching and improving practice. Courtly love began in the ducal and princely courts of Aquitaine, Provence, Champagne, ducal Burgundy and the Norman Kingdom of Sicily at the end of the eleventh century. In essence, courtly love was an experience between erotic desire and spiritual attainment that now seems contradictory as "a love at once illicit and morally elevating, passionate and disciplined, humiliating and exalting, human and transcendent".〔Francis X. Newman, ed. (1968). ''The Meaning of Courtly Love'', vii.〕 The term "courtly love" was first popularized by Gaston Paris and has since come under a wide variety of definitions and uses. Its interpretation, origins and influences continue to be a matter of critical debate. ==Origin of term== While its origin is uncertain, the term ''amour courtois'' ("courtly love") was given greater popularity by Gaston Paris〔 in his 1883 article "Études sur les romans de la Table Ronde: Lancelot du Lac, II: ''Le conte de la charrette''", a treatise inspecting Chretien de Troyes's ''Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart'' (1177). Paris said ''amour courtois'' was an idolization and ennobling discipline. The lover (idolizer) accepts the independence of his mistress and tries to make himself worthy of her by acting bravely and honorably (nobly) and by doing whatever deeds she might desire, subjecting himself to a series of tests (ordeals) to prove to her his ardor and commitment. Sexual satisfaction, Paris said, may not have been a goal or even end result, but the love was not entirely Platonic either, as it was based on sexual attraction. The term and Paris's definition were soon widely accepted and adopted. In 1936 C. S. Lewis wrote ''The Allegory of Love'' further solidifying courtly love as a "love of a highly specialized sort, whose characteristics may be enumerated as Humility, Courtesy, Adultery, and the Religion of Love".〔Lewis, C.S., ''The Allegory of Love'', p. 2. (1936)〕 Later, historians such as D. W. Robertson, Jr.,〔Robertson Jr., D. W., "Some Medieval Doctrines of Love", ''A Preface to Chaucer''.〕 in the 1960s and John C. Moore〔John C. Moore begins his review of the history and pitfalls of the term, "The beginning of the term 'courtly love' is commonly placed in one of two centuries, the nineteenth or the twelfth" (John C. Moore, "Courtly Love": A Problem of Terminology", ''Journal of the History of Ideas'' 40.4 (1979 ), pp. 621–632).〕 and E. Talbot Donaldson〔E. Talbot Donaldson, "The Myth of Courtly Love", ''Speaking of Chaucer'' (New York: Norton, 1970), pp. 154–163.〕 in the 1970s, were critical of the term as being a modern invention, Donaldson calling it "The Myth of Courtly Love", because it is not supported in medieval texts. Even though the term "courtly love" does appear only in just one extant Provençal poem (as ''cortez amors'' in a late 12th-century lyric by Peire d'Alvernhe), it is closely related to the term ''fin'amor'' ("fine love") which does appear frequently in Provençal and French, as well as German translated as ''hohe Minne''. In addition, other terms and phrases associated with "courtliness" and "love" are common throughout the Middle Ages. Even though Paris used a term with little support in the contemporaneous literature, it was not a neologism and does usefully describe a particular conception of love and focuses on the courtliness that was at its essence.〔Roger Boase (1986). "Courtly Love," in ''Dictionary of the Middle Ages'', Vol. 3, pp. 667–668.〕 Richard Trachsler says that "the concept of courtly literature is linked to the idea of the existence of courtly texts, texts produced and read by men and women sharing some kind of elaborate culture they all have in common".〔 He argues that many of the texts that scholars claim to be courtly also include "uncourtly" texts, and argues that there is no clear way to determine "where courtliness ends and uncourtliness starts" because readers would enjoy texts which were supposed to be entirely courtly without realizing they were also enjoying texts which were uncourtly.〔 This presents a clear problem in the understanding of courtliness.〔Busby, Keith, and Christopher Kleinhenz. Courtly Arts and the Art of Courtliness: Selected Papers from the Eleventh Triennial Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society. Cambridge, MA: D.S. Brewer, 2006. 679-692. Print.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Courtly love」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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