Courtly Love in the Middle Ages

Courtly love is the name given to a style of poetry that celebrated human love, particularly the love of the poet (always a man) for a high-born and extraordinary lady. This is the outline of the notion of courtly love, but it appears to contain not only the implication of physical love but also--and perhaps more significantly--the attributes of a deeply felt relationship at the psychological level. This is implicit in Collins's description of the term:

One of the main subjects of the poetry at that time was "love," the "courtly love" celebrated in song by the medieval troubadours. Dante was very much a part of this poetic movement which had originated in southern France (La Provence), was developed in Sicily under the patronage of Frederick II, and had become extremely popular in Dante's region, Tuscany. This poetic style with its stress on the theme of love was known in Italy as the dolce stil nuovo, the "sweet new style." Its passionate celebration of human love, its adoration of a particular "lady," its r

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s development, indeed, describes stilnovism, which is variously translated as "sweet new music" and "that sweet new style of purest song" of poetry that is cited in the Purgatorio when Dante encounters a long-dead poet of moderate distinction: But is this really the creator of those new canzoni, one of which begins 'Ladies who have the intellect of Love'?" And I: "When Love inspires me with delight" or pain, or longing, I take careful note, and as he dictates in my soul, I write." And he: "Ah, brother, now I see the thong that held Guittone, and the Judge, and me short of that sweet new style of purest song. (Dante, Purg., XXIV, 49-57) On this view, emotion overtakes the poet, who must express what Love requires. Who cannot or does not express it is no real poet. This is the view of commentators on the Purg. incident, wherein the inferior poet Bonagiunta acknowledges Dante's lyric superiority (Ciardi 249; Harrison 33). The theory behind this is that the tradition of courtly poetry is really an emerging tradition of a specialized artistic expression. However loosely one wants to group the individual practices of these poets, the "new" elements in stilnovism are its radical interiorization of
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2804
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)

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