ise of love itself were the constant topics of troubadour poetry" (20). Because the love had little chance of being physically consummated--because, in fact, the love poetry expressed far more a fantasy of love rather than direct erotic or adulterous experience--the poet could declare his passion boldly and unreservedly and dedicate his very life to the beloved, while escaping moral censure by the Church. It is this to which Collins is referring when he cites the style of the poetry as "the bright burst of spring with all its freshness and delicate beauty" (21).
The experience of the beloved as something unattainable carried with it the idealization of that beloved. By extension, the very structure of courtly love implies the love of and performance on behalf of an ideal. Something of this is suggested by Goldin in his description of the social-moral obligations that the courtly lover assumes on behalf of the beloved:
[T]he behavior that Guillaume describes is more than a strategy for some lone lover, it is the established and definitive behavior of a social class, the behavior that distinguishes it as a class: it is the defining visible form of courtly life. The lover has to love like a courtly man, and the setting is now so essential to his love, as the only means of its expression, that his unsuccess in love necessarily implies his failure as a courtly man. Love has become the enactment of courtliness: the way a man loves is the surest sign of his identity as a courtly man.
We can again sense these new social and aesthetic obligations imposed on lust if we recall Guillaume's Ovidian boasts in the song of the gaming table, where his savoir-faire in court is but one aspect of his universal aptitude. He is good in court and good in bed because he is just plain good. He is a worthy man to begin with, in this morality of skill, and his boast about knowing the ropes at court was never meant as a proof that he deserves ...