Thoughts on Courtly love (aka platonic love)

[Neo-Scholastic]

Sour grapes would be trying to get something, failing to do so, and then convincing yourself that you never wanted it in the first place.

Indeed....which makes the notion of courtly love an even more pathetic self-inflicted thrall. For some reason Nietzsche's notion of slave morality comes to mind. Odd that.

[Jehanne]

Courtly love was the romance novels and soap operas of the Late Middle Ages and early modern period. People were starting to get bored of organized religion.

[Belacqua]

Dante among his peers such as Petrarch popularized the courtly love. Which is honestly, I believe, an emotion most men feel at young age. To fall in love with a girl by just looking at her, and feeling and overwhelming sensation when near her, to the point of not thinking or talk coherently.

Do you think such concept has now disappeared from the social collective or ridiculed by words such as Oneitis

Courtly love is beautiful on paper, but painful in real life.

The term "courtly love" is a modern invention, used to define a variety of literary tropes and real-life practices that played out over centuries. It is certainly NOT "aka Platonic love," because courtly love was often sexual, and always had an erotic component. Nor was it always "love at first sight," though often it began with one person seeing another and noticing how hot they were. 

It isn't about a sad incel man being controlled by a woman. Often the theme involves a man who strives to be worthy of a woman and accomplishes great things. This is not slavery, it's inspiration. In some cases he gets rewarded with sex, in some cases the sexual desire gets diverted into more idealistic pursuits. The theme largely begins with the rediscovery of Ovid's book the Ars Amatoria, in which he ironically claims that all civilization began as an attempt by men to impress women. I've seen it claimed that medieval people took Ovid's irony seriously, though I suspect they were more comfortable with non-literal tropes than many people are today. 

Like many literary cliches, when people began to be influenced by it in real life it didn't always live up to the novels. Not many men actually ended up reconquering Jerusalem in order to get laid. In practice it tended to be a cover for adultery, or a way for people to feel high-minded about their lust. Contemporary writers who condemned the literature and its influences usually accused it of this. On the other hand religious authorities approved of diverting adulterous desires into good deeds, and sometimes praised the romance novels as a good influence -- when it actually aimed at good deeds. 

As an unorganized constellation of literary tropes, courtly love was familiar enough by Dante's time that he could use its symbols for his own original purposes. His readers would have been familiar with stories similar to that of his love for Beatrice, so he could confidently use the theme entirely as allegory. Later on Petrarch, under the influence of Dante, named Laura as his erotic inspiration, although it's possible that she was not a real person. Her name refers to laurel leaves, with which great poets are crowned, so that from the beginning she may well have been a personification of his desire for literary greatness. 

It's a varied and fascinating phenomenon. It helped to raise the status of women, by presenting them as something valuable and worth striving for, rather than as simply a possession or a baby-making machine.

[The Grand Nudger]

Oh, idk, theres a version of that in Thank You For Smoking. We do it all for the mortgage. Seems like we're still pretty good at telling the same stories.

[Jehanne]

Dante among his peers such as Petrarch popularized the courtly love. Which is honestly, I believe, an emotion most men feel at young age. To fall in love with a girl by just looking at her, and feeling and overwhelming sensation when near her, to the point of not thinking or talk coherently.

Do you think such concept has now disappeared from the social collective or ridiculed by words such as Oneitis

Courtly love is beautiful on paper, but painful in real life.

The term "courtly love" is a modern invention, used to define a variety of literary tropes and real-life practices that played out over centuries. It is certainly NOT "aka Platonic love," because courtly love was often sexual, and always had an erotic component. Nor was it always "love at first sight," though often it began with one person seeing another and noticing how hot they were. 

It isn't about a sad incel man being controlled by a woman. Often the theme involves a man who strives to be worthy of a woman and accomplishes great things. This is not slavery, it's inspiration. In some cases he gets rewarded with sex, in some cases the sexual desire gets diverted into more idealistic pursuits. The theme largely begins with the rediscovery of Ovid's book the Ars Amatoria, in which he ironically claims that all civilization began as an attempt by men to impress women. I've seen it claimed that medieval people took Ovid's irony seriously, though I suspect they were more comfortable with non-literal tropes than many people are today. 

Like many literary cliches, when people began to be influenced by it in real life it didn't always live up to the novels. Not many men actually ended up reconquering Jerusalem in order to get laid. In practice it tended to be a cover for adultery, or a way for people to feel high-minded about their lust. Contemporary writers who condemned the literature and its influences usually accused it of this. On the other hand religious authorities approved of diverting adulterous desires into good deeds, and sometimes praised the romance novels as a good influence -- when it actually aimed at good deeds. 

As an unorganized constellation of literary tropes, courtly love was familiar enough by Dante's time that he could use its symbols for his own original purposes. His readers would have been familiar with stories similar to that of his love for Beatrice, so he could confidently use the theme entirely as allegory. Later on Petrarch, under the influence of Dante, named Laura as his erotic inspiration, although it's possible that she was not a real person. Her name refers to laurel leaves, with which great poets are crowned, so that from the beginning she may well have been a personification of his desire for literary greatness. 

It's a varied and fascinating phenomenon. It helped to raise the status of women, by presenting them as something valuable and worth striving for, rather than as simply a possession or a baby-making machine.

The concept of Courtly love came a few centuries after the First Crusade, the principle motivation being religious on the part of the Crusading commoners who, after being crushed at the Battle of Civetot, were followed by the Barons' Crusade, which conquered Jerusalem.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Nah...its just the femdom porn of an earlier era.

[Jehanne]

Nah...its just the femdom porn of an earlier era.

Lots of medieval Bibles have porn drawings in them. I will post some images in Area 69!