In this book of only sixty-four pages, Pamela Porter, former Curator of German and Scandinavian Manuscripts at the British Library, gives a brief overview of the medieval phenomenon now known as "courtly love" and puts it into a meaningful historical context with modern society as the reference. And most importantly, Porter adds a visual dimension to the discussion of "courtly love" by including beautiful reproductions of over sixty illuminations from forty different manuscripts that compliment the text and contribute to an understanding of the medieval perception of the poetry and romances that gave birth to and perpetuated the tradition of this new type of love.
In order to demonstrate the difference between literary convention and reality, Porter gives evidence of some of the few examples of genuine affection between medieval European men and women that have survived to our day. For example, about 1500 Pierre Sala presented to Marguerite Bullioul, his future wife, an elegant and luxurious book of illustrated poems that he had written to communicate his feelings to his beloved. In the late fifteenth century, one thousand letters passed between John Paston II and his wife Margery that demonstrate the depth of feeling they felt for each other in the midst of business details that had to be communicated. During the negotiation for their marriage, Margery writes affectionately to John calling him "my right well beloved Valentine," the first recorded example of this term of endearment. Porter's third example is less convincing since she chooses Christine de Pisan's Le Livre du duc des vrais amans (The Book of the Duke of True Lovers) also from the fifteenth century thought to be based on the relationship between Marie, wife of Philippe d'Artois, Constable of France and Jean Duc de Bourbon, who married Marie after Philippe's death. The example would be a tempting one to select since it gives an account of the love of an unmarried man in love with a married woman. However, in other works, Christine was quite adept at expressing the conceits associated with "courtly love" and Le Livre du duc des vrais amans cannot be considered evidence as solid as the two others of an expression of love between two historical figures.
These extant examples of affection between individuals contrast sharply with the stylized literary expression in poetry and courtly romance that originated in southern France in the first part of the twelfth century among the troubadours who sang in Occitan (Porter uses "Provençal" to describe their language. However, Provençal is just one dialect of Occitan). These poets described their love in terms of feudal service and sang the praises of a single lady whose identity by necessity remained unknown since by tradition she was married. Porter makes very clear that this expression of love was by nature stylized and literary and was an element in a game at court not necessarily linked to reality. The literary model, however, eventually influenced the behavior of knights toward ladies at court and quickly spread to northern France and Germany as a popular literary theme. Contemporary critics claimed, probably with some truth, that this literary game could serve as an excuse for illicit love.
Porter selects some literary works to highlight in the presentation of the courtly love tradition. Chrétien de Troyes' Lancelot or Le Chevalier de la charette (second half of the twelfth century) serves as one of the best since it is this romance that served as Gaston Paris's basis of the definition of "amour courtois" in 1883. While this type of love is not necessarily consummated, Lancelot does spend a night of passion with Guinevere. A continuation and narrative form of the love lyric, the thirteenth-century Roman de la Rose proved to be immensely popular and influential especially in England. Begun by Guillaume de Lorris and completed by John de Meung, the two parts of this narrative differ radically in style and content, but by means of allegory both relate the tale of the taking of the Rose in the Castle of Love by a valiant knight despite numerous obstacles. In the late fifteenth century in England, Malory in his Morte d'Arthur combined the courtly love tradition with the story of the Grail and that of Lancelot and Guinevere to create a work that still serves as the source of most modern treatments of Arthur's court.
Porter's account of the courtly love tradition in Germany implies that the minnesanger were more innovative than they actually were. She states that "this poetry was less an imitation of its predecessors than an independently developed tradition" consisting of variations on the theme of lady worship. In fact, the themes that she mentions were all important components of the Occitan poetry that the German poets chose to emphasize: "love and suffering as inevitable companions," ladies "adored with a quasi-religious fervor," and "love and worship of the lady, with an underlying premise of moral improvement for the lover."
Presenting such a complex subject as courtly love in so few pages is a challenging feat. Porter has done an excellent job, but I cannot resist pointing out a few details that I feel should have been included. While she mentions similarities in Ovid's Ars Amatoria to the courtly love tradition, she never attempts to trace any other sources of this unique development at the beginning of the twelfth century, in particular the Arabic poetry of northern Spain whose links geographically, culturally, and literarily to the troubadours in southern France have been well established.
Also, the movement of the tradition from southern France into the north was greatly facilitated by the marriage in 1137 of Louis VII to Alienor d'Aquitaine, who arrived in Paris with her entourage that included not only her household accustomed to the troubadour songs but some troubadours themselves.
Porter consistently makes statements such as "throughout the Middle Ages" as if this time span is common knowledge. Often, the "Middle Ages" is described as beginning with the fall of Rome in 476 and continuing until the mid or late fifteenth century. Obviously, "courtly love" appeared in the twelfth century not the fifth, and some of Porter's examples date from the early sixteenth century. This is a small point but one that could have been clarified in a few sentences.
Despite these small but not insignificant points, Porter presents an accessible and accurate account of courtly love as a literary phenomenon and succeeds in placing it in the historical context in which it was born. She explains the enormous appeal of courtly romances as escapist literature especially to women whose choice of a husband was determined by the financial and territorial concerns of her family and also succeeds in establishing this concept as the ancestor of our idea of chivalry and of modern romantic love.
The audience of this book is unlikely to be medieval specialists, but it should have an immense appeal to a popular audience with an interest in the Middle Ages. Appealing to both audiences, however, is the abundance of illuminations, from mostly fourteenth and fifteenth manuscripts, in dazzling color that depict knights and ladies together in gardens, on horseback, or in boats whose body language often conveys the affection they feel for each other. There are also illuminations of ladies watching knights at tournaments, knights rescuing damsels in distress, marriage ceremonies, Lancelot, Guinevere, and Arthur.
I strongly recommend this book to all those who enjoy the delights of the Middle Ages, both specialists (for the illuminations) and those who wish to learn more about this fascinating era.