The Enduring Popularity of Courtly Love
Not long after the turn of the first millennium, C.E., a phenomenon known as "courtly love" emerged in medieval Europe. Andreas Capellanus, chaplain to Marie de France and author of the classic The Art of Courtly Love, defined Love as ". . . a certain inborn suffering derived from the sight of and excessive meditation upon the beauty of the opposite sex, which causes each one to wish above all things the embraces of the other and by common desire to carry out all of love's precepts in the other's embrace." Lauded by nobility and idolized by troubadours, the ideal of "pure" love (which included strongly self-deprecating behavior and servitude by a man for a distant, unattainable woman) was a driving force throughout the high period of medieval love literature. From 1100 to 1300 (most intensely in the quarter-centuries before and after 1200), the language of lady love prevailed in the courts of England and Europe.
Courtly love was viewed as an......

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Title: Courtly Love
Approximate Word Count: 4837
Approximate Pages: 20 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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