The Afterlife, Reincarnation, and Courtly Love

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Morthoron

- and nearly all the important tales of courtly love ended tragically (with the heart of the doomed lover sent in a box to his amour).

First, it depends on what one means by courtly love, a term that is never used in the medieval texts themselves. That said, there are certainly many tales of tragic lover affairs that are tragic, but not all are courtly by most definitions. The great Prose Tristan ends tragically but is far more focused on Tristan’s knightly exploits than on the love affair between Tristan and Yseult. It has never been called a courtly romance as far as I am aware.

Indeed I have read commentary on the so-called courtly versions of the Tristan story, those based on the version told by Thomas, which point out that Tristan and Yseult in these versions really don’t fit the supposed model as set forth in The Art of Courtly Love by Andreas Capellanus (which in any case I think to be an obvious parody).

A popular medieval love story that ends happily is Aucassin and Nicolette. More often a love affair is just part of a medieval romance of adventure which tends to end with the marriage of the hero, or may contain a second movement in which the marriage falls into difficulties which are resolved, as in Chrétien de Troyes’ Erec et Enide or his Yvain.

I only vaguely recall any medieval romance in which the heart of the dead hero is sent to his lady love in a box. That is far from being a normal motif in medieval tales.

Tolkien hardly bowdlerizes his sources because he does not follow any sources closely. Rather, he picks and chooses even within the same tale and most often freely invents.

That said, Tolkien was more interested in adventurous tales than in love tales per se. The same is true of the author of Beowulf.