ation as a distant, unattainable
dream. The poet's passionate love for her and the praise 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.
H...