The Afterlife, Reincarnation, and Courtly Love

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Morthoron

That there was such a literary tradition is beyond doubt, and though added emphasis was placed on the specific term "courtly love" in the 19th century, scholars do not consider it neologistic when referring to the tradition.

From Norris J. Lacy in The New Arthurian Encyclopedia, the article on Courtly Love:

COURTLY LOVE, a term first used by Gaston Paris in an 1883 article. It may well be a misleading designation for the medieval phenomenon it is supposed to identify. A good many scholars criticize the term and propose that it be abandoned. That is unlikely to occur, owing to its familiarity and usefulness. It is often, and probably erroneously, used interchangeably with fin’amors, which is the proper term for a conception of love propounded by the Provençal troubadours. A question that has occupied a good many scholars is whether courtly love, in northern France especially, was a historical and cultural phenomenon or simply a literary convention.

Lacy continues. I realize that most scholars do not deny that the tradition existed, but they do disagree, often vehemently, on what exactly was meant by what they call courtly love by different writers.

Then you are not aware of the tremendous amount of scholarly work regarding the courtly love aspects of Tristan and Iseult. A simple Google look-up of "Tristan and Iseult Courtly Love" yields over 47,000 results.

I am so aware. However much of it applies only to works in the Thomas tradition, not to other verse Tristan material and the prose material. You seem not be aware that there were four main streams of Tristan material in European tales: the Welsh tradition, the so-called folk tradition found in the works of Béroul and Eilhart von Oberge, the more refined so-called courtly tradition in the version of Thomas and adaptations into other languages, and the later immense prose romances in four main versions with adaptations into other languages.

Not all tales of adultery need also be tales of what some modern writers call courtly love.

Or you can simply read up on it in the works of Joseph Campbell, who used Tristan and Isolde to illustrate the conventions of courtly love.

Campbell unfortunately so greatly oversimplifies that his work in that area is almost useless.

Have you even read any Chrétien de Troyes? In Le Chevalier au Lion, Yvain is a landless hero who kills a knight and then marries the dead knight's widow and takes his lands and titles (after several pages of protestation of his adoration for the lady). That is hardly an acceptable moral convention of the time, but more an apsect of courtly love.

Yes, I have read all of extant Chrétien de Troyes. That Chrétien so concentrates on marriage is why many commentators don’t think that Chrétien was much influenced by so-called courtly love, at least in its extreme form. I do not see that marrying the widow of a knight whom one has slain should be seen as an aspect of courtly love. I suspect that you may be seeing something you call “courtly love” when the text only tells of love by one person of another.

Le Chevalier de la Charette (The Knight on the Cart) is one long swooning mess of courtly love, where Lancelot undergoes all sorts of melancholy, ridicule and embarrassments to prove his ardor to Guinevere (again, like Isuelt, a married woman). Chrétien de Troyes' work is one of the earliest and clearly defined examples of fin' amour. de Troyes was influenced by Marie of Champagne (daughter of the sexually uninhibited Eleanor of Aquitaine), and through her, de Troyes remade the Arthurian romances in the image of courtly love.

Chrétien comes close to an adulterous relationship in his Cligés and steps over the line in his Lancelot. These, to judge by adaptations into other languages, were the least popular of his poems. Many commentators consider that Chrétien somewhat distanced himself from the morality of his Lancelot when he ascribed both the source material and its treatment to Marie of Champagne and then did not even finish the poem, leaving that to Godfroi de Leigni. This surviving poem by Chrétien alone praises an adulterous hero.

Chrétien’s most popular poems praised married life and dealt with difficulties that arose in marriage. Have you never noticed that only one poem by Chrétien really fits in the courtly love tradition, such as it may be?

On the contrary, "Le Roman du Châtelain de Coucy", which I mentioned previously, was the favorite and most widely known in the courts of 14th century dukedoms in France and in Italy (retold there by Boccaccio in The Decameron).

Fair enough. But that is only one story. You indicated more when you wrote:

… 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).

One example is not “nearly all”.

I am quite aware of the customs of saving embalmed body parts as relics. But that is not a common motif in medieval adventure romances.

I used the qualifier "If anything", as in, had Tolkien paid any attention to the conventions of courtly love at all, he bowdlerized it beyond recognition. There are really no elements of courtly love as I have heard it defined in Tolkien's work.

Nor is there in many medieval poems, including most of Chrétien. And you can’t bowdlerize something which is mainly your own invention, unless you produce a cleaned-up version of your own work. Even Tennyson produced a mostly faithful Victorian version of Chrétien’s Erec et Enide in his two idylls The Marriage of Geraint and Geraint and Enid. He did not need to bowdlerize it in any way. I fail to see how Chrétien is more explicitly telling a tale based on the ideals of courtly love than Tennyson.

Tolkien introduces a version of courtly love only in Gimli the dwarf’s deep love and affection for Galadriel, when Gimli desires only a lock of Galadriel’s hair as a gift.

This is the antithesis of Tolkien's view of love. There is no sex outside of marriage, …

What of Beren and Lúthien? From the published Silmarillion:

But as she [Lúthien] looked on him [Beren], doom fell upon her, and she loved him; yet she slipped away from his arms and vanished from his sight even as the day was breaking.

What do you imagine Lúthien was doing in Beren’s arms and on subsequent meetings when she rejoined him again? I admit that this account is not explicit and the verse versions published in The Lays of Beleriand are also not explicit. In contrast, Chrétien has Perceval share a bed for the night with Blanchefleur but explicitly indicates that no sex occurred, not something one would expect in someone pushing courtly love as commonly understood.

Christopher Tolkien in The Book of Lost Tales Part II remarks on page 52:

In the old story, Tinúviel had no meetings with Beren before the day when he boldly accosted her at last, and it was at that very time the she led him to Tinwelent’s cave; they were not lovers.

This implies that in the later story Christopher Tolkien understands that at the same point Beren and Lúthien had become lovers.

Note also in Sir Thomas Malory’s “Tale of Sir Gareth” in his Le Morte d′Arthur there is emphasis on preventing Gareth and Lady Liones from lying with one another until they are properly married. Courtly love is not nearly as common in medieval tales as you think it is, and even where the idea of an adulterous relationship occurs as true love in a story, other more conventional ideas may occur in the same tale without forcing the reader to choose between them.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by jallanite

What of Beren and Lúthien? From the published Silmarillion:

But as she [Lúthien] looked on him [Beren], doom fell upon her, and she loved him; yet she slipped away from his arms and vanished from his sight even as the day was breaking.

What do you imagine Lúthien was doing in Beren’s arms and on subsequent meetings when she rejoined him again? I admit that this account is not explicit and the verse versions published in The Lays of Beleriand are also not explicit. In contrast, Chrétien has Perceval share a bed for the night with Blanchefleur but explicitly indicates that no sex occurred, not something one would expect in someone pushing courtly love as commonly understood.

There's a great Downs thread on the sexual nature of Beren and Luthien's relationship started by Lush: Ooh la la Luthien. Mark 12_30 provides some relevant quotations on elven marriage from "Laws and Customs of the Eldar" (HoME, Morgoth's Ring).

[jallanite]

The thread http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showthread.php?t=2427 was an excellent one. It indicates what I expected, that you can read into the Beren story that Beren and Lúthien were chaste until they eventually married, or that they began to have sex when they first met.

But, as pointed out, Tolkien does not even bother to relate any marriage of Beren and Lúthien.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by jallanite

The thread http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showthread.php?t=2427 was an excellent one. It indicates what I expected, that you can read into the Beren story that Beren and Lúthien were chaste until they eventually married, or that they began to have sex when they first met.

But, as pointed out, Tolkien does not even bother to relate any marriage of Beren and Lúthien.

Well, if, as he wrote in Laws and Customs of the Eldar,

Originally Posted by Mark quoting Tolkien

It was the act of bodily union that achieved marriage, and after which the indissoluble bond was complete

,

then he wouldn't have to describe any marriage ceremony, especially given Beren's escape from the gift. He seems to partake of Luthien's elven heritage. When Arwen gives up her elven heritage, she becomes human, like Aragorn, and so their love follows human conventions.

Perhaps it means that elves didn't need rituals but men (and hobbits) did.

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by jallanite

From Norris J. Lacy in The New Arthurian Encyclopedia, the article on Courtly Love:

COURTLY LOVE, a term first used by Gaston Paris in an 1883 article. It may well be a misleading designation for the medieval phenomenon it is supposed to identify. A good many scholars criticize the term and propose that it be abandoned. That is unlikely to occur, owing to its familiarity and usefulness. It is often, and probably erroneously, used interchangeably with fin’amors, which is the proper term for a conception of love propounded by the Provençal troubadours. A question that has occupied a good many scholars is whether courtly love, in northern France especially, was a historical and cultural phenomenon or simply a literary convention.

Lacy continues. I realize that most scholars do not deny that the tradition existed, but they do disagree, often vehemently, on what exactly was meant by what they call courtly love by different writers.

So, your source claims the term courtly love "may well be misleading" (strong conviction there!), but he agrees to the term's "usefulness". He agrees that the "tradition existed", but just does not like the term itself. In addition, he uses the utterly weak phrase "probably erroneously" in regards to the interchangeability of "courtly love" and "fin'amors". Bravo! This scholarly gibberish equates to nothing but equivocation. Usually posters use sources to bolster their argument, not weaken it.

Originally Posted by jallanite

I am so aware. However much of it applies only to works in the Thomas tradition, not to other verse Tristan material and the prose material. You seem not be aware that there were four main streams of Tristan material in European tales: the Welsh tradition, the so-called folk tradition found in the works of Béroul and Eilhart von Oberge, the more refined so-called courtly tradition in the version of Thomas and adaptations into other languages, and the later immense prose romances in four main versions with adaptations into other languages.

I am certainly aware of different Tristan traditions, but I am speaking in context to the subject at hand, courtly love and Tolkien, not layering the discussion with superfluous and spurious addenda. When referring to the “Welsh tradition” it would be just as contextually useless to discuss the development of the Arthurian cycle prior to Chrétien de Troyes. Gildas, Geofrey of Monmouth and Wace have little to do with the discussion of courtly love in L’ Morte d’Arthur or Yvain, the Knight of the Lion, so why throw in the Mabinogion, or even a possible Irish antecedent like The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gráinne?

The courtly love literary tradition is markedly different in approach to the earlier traditions, and it is the Prose Tristan that was the most popular version in the High Middle Ages and throughout the 14th century, and was influential in Malory’s development of Le Morte d’Arthur, the most popular of all the retellings of the Arthurian Cycle. The “common stream (or branch)” of the Tristan saga, as written by the like of Béroul, is noncourtly and unchivalric, bearing more resemblance to the Dark Ages than the High or Late Middle Ages, and it was not the version popular in English, German, French or Italian courts.

Originally Posted by jallanite

Not all tales of adultery need also be tales of what some modern writers call courtly love.

And yet the most popular exemplars of courtly love tales in the 13th, 14th and 15th century, Prose Tristran, Châtelain de Coucy, and Le Morte d’Arthur, each have adultery as a main theme, a cuckolded husband and the tragic demise of the lovers. In addition, both Chaucer and Boccaccio had as their ultimate influences courtly romances. Courtly love abounds in The Canterbury Tales: The Miller’s Tale, The Franklin’s Tale, The Merchant’s Tale, etc., are all of the courtly tradition, which Chaucer was immersed in at the court of the Duke of Lancaster. All of these, even the fabliaux of the Miller’s Tale (a direct criticism of courtly love) has adultery or the coveting of another man’s wife as its central premise. Chaucer even uses the lusty Wife of Bath as the antithesis to the courtly love found in The Knight’s Tale, and she says straight out that courtly love is artificial. In her tale, the knight goes against all chivalry and rapes a girl.

C.S. Lewis in his The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition speaks of his “theory of adultery” in the courtly love tradition, using Lancelot and Guinevere as the most apt example. He characterizes the idiosyncratic conventions that first surrounded courtly love as "the peculiar form which it first took; the four marks of Humility, Courtesy, Adultery, and the Religion of Love". Lewis then goes on to say:

“Two things prevented the men of that age from connecting their ideal of romantic and passionate love with marriage. The first is, of course, the actual practice of feudal society. Marriages had nothing to do with love, and no ‘nonsense’ about marriage was tolerated. All matches were matches of interest, and, worse still, of an interest that was continually changing. When the alliance which had answered would answer no longer, the husband’s object was to get rid of the lady as quickly as possible. Marriages were frequently dissolved. The same woman who was the lady and the ‘dearest dread’ of her vassals was often little better than a piece of property to her husband…Any idealization of sexual love, in a society where marriage is purely utilitarian, must begin by being an idealization of adultery.”

In A Handbook of Troubadours by F. Akehurst and J. Davis, the authors are even more pointed:

“Whether the married lady of the songs is historical or fictional does not alter the fact that the nature of fin’amor, as poetically articulated in these cansos, remains adulterous beyond any doubt.

Originally Posted by jallanite

Campbell unfortunately so greatly oversimplifies that his work in that area is almost useless.

Replace the words “greatly oversimplifies” with the phrase “I don’t agree with Campbell” and we’re more likely closer to the truth.

Originally Posted by jallanite

Yes, I have read all of extant Chrétien de Troyes. That Chrétien so concentrates on marriage is why many commentators don’t think that Chrétien was much influenced by so-called courtly love, at least in its extreme form. I do not see that marrying the widow of a knight whom one has slain should be seen as an aspect of courtly love. I suspect that you may be seeing something you call “courtly love” when the text only tells of love by one person of another.

I would suggest that if a villain slew a knight, took his widow to wife and stole his lands and title, he would be viewed as reprehensible, yet here de Troyes envisages the character as heroic within the conventions of courtly love, which are indeed skewed and artificial, and certainly against the societal norms of the times.

I'll reply to the rest as I have time.

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Morthoron

In addition, he uses the utterly weak phrase "probably erroneously" in regards to the interchangeability of "courtly love" and "fin'amors". Bravo! This scholarly gibberish equates to nothing but equivocation. Usually posters use sources to bolster their argument, not weaken it.

This and other comments I have read make perfect sense to me. I could provide other quotes but to what point? You believe what you want to believe and ignore the evidence and resort to name-calling. Is that really the best you can do? You can easily look up Norris J. Lacy on the web and see that he is at least one of the most prominent and respected medievalists of our day and well versed in what most people would call courtly love literature.

I suggest you begin by looking at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courtly_love . I realize that source is not the best. But it mostly agrees with what I have learned though other channels.

I am certainly aware of different Tristan traditions, but I am speaking in context to the subject at hand, courtly love and Tolkien, not layering the discussion with superfluous and spurious addenda. When referring to the “Welsh tradition” it would be just as contextually useless to discuss the development of the Arthurian cycle prior to Chrétien de Troyes. Gildas, Geofrey of Monmouth and Wace have little to do with the discussion of courtly love in L’ Morte d’Arthur or Yvain, the Knight of the Lion, so why throw in the Mabinogion, or even a possible Irish antecedent like The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gráinne?

It is hard to know what the other person in a discussion knows. But it don’t see any courtly love in Yvain.

But even the courtly romances of Tristan fall far beneath the idealogy imagined for courtly love. Even in the courtly romances Tristan does not hang on every word of Yseult like Lancelot does to Guenevere in Chrétien. That Tristan goes so far as to marry another woman is still part of this version of the tale, something not to be thought of if courtly love as commonly understood is the guide to Tristan’s actions.

This version appears to be written to fit the tastes of the courtiers of the time, a modification of an earlier form of the tale, but far from the ideal courtly love. Tristan is to a degree a more courtly knight, who does not kill any of the lepers from whom he rescues Yseult, unlike in other versions. Tristan does not simply camp out in the forest or live in a deserted mansion, but dwells in a fantastic cave built by giants. He later has a fantastic hall built by a giant with a statue of Yseult within.

The courtly love literary tradition is markedly different in approach to the earlier traditions, and it is the Prose Tristan that was the most popular version in the High Middle Ages and throughout the 14th century, and was influential in Malory’s development of Le Morte d’Arthur, the most popular of all the retellings of the Arthurian Cycle.

While more courtly than the folk version or Welsh version, it is more chivalric than the so-called courtly version. And it introduces Dinadan in a great many episodes, Dinadan being very much an anti-courtly and anti-chivalric character who pokes fun at chivalric pretensions.

The “common stream (or branch)” of the Tristan saga, as written by the like of Béroul, is noncourtly and unchivalric, bearing more resemblance to the Dark Ages than the High or Late Middle Ages, and it was not the version popular in English, German, French or Italian courts.

So by medieval you mean only “late medieval″? A convenient way to throw out a large body of medieval works.

And yet the most popular exemplars of courtly love tales in the 13th, 14th and 15th century, Prose Tristran, Châtelain de Coucy, and Le Morte d’Arthur, each have adultery as a main theme, a cuckolded husband and the tragic demise of the lovers.

You really shouldn’t be including Le Morte d’Arthur as Lancelot and Guenevere’s deaths in that version are not intended to be seen as tragic. They are arguably the best deaths possible under the circumstances. And Le Morte d’Arthur was only written in 1470 and so obviously not one of the most popular tales of the 13th, 14th, and most of the 15th centuries.

You have really only provided two romances and ignored the many, many, many other medieval romances that don’t fit your idea of what people should have been reading.

You are like a broken record, not seeing anything but courtly love and not seeing anything outside French tales. At least some English were also as well or instead reading things like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Havelok the Dane, Floris and Blauncheflour, and various other works. Even French works contain many in which no love-affair even occurs or in which it is hardly treated in a courtly manner, for example Huon de Bordeaux or Le Roman de Mélusine by Jean d’Arras. Even the French Vulgate Merlin was adapted into English by three different authors and it has almost nothing in it that anyone would call courtly love.

In addition, both Chaucer and Boccaccio had as their ultimate influences courtly romances. Courtly love abounds in The Canterbury Tales: The Miller’s Tale, The Franklin’s Tale, The Merchant’s Tale, etc., are all of the courtly tradition, which Chaucer was immersed in at the court of the Duke of Lancaster. All of these, even the fabliaux of the Miller’s Tale (a direct criticism of courtly love) has adultery or the coveting of another man’s wife as its central premise.

The Odyssey, the Aeneid, and other classical works and works from Germanic tradition also have lots of adultery. And those traditions also provide tales in which there almost no sexual activity. You are so overstating the presence of courtly love.

Replace the words “greatly oversimplifies” with the phrase “I don’t agree with Campbell” and we’re more likely closer to the truth.

Sticks and stones ... Call me a liar if you want. Who are the we of which you speak?

I have never denied, ever, that tales of adultery are a commonplace in medieval literature. Even the Bible tells of David and Bathsheba. But also a commonplace are tales in which adultery never occurs

I would suggest that if a villain slew a knight, took his widow to wife and stole his lands and title, he would be viewed as reprehensible, yet here de Troyes envisages the character as heroic within the conventions of courtly love, which are indeed skewed and artificial, and certainly against the societal norms of the times.

Provide a medieval source of your idea that Yvain was in any way following some courtly tradition in marrying the widow of the man he had killed. I note the word would which is often a sign that the speaker is not very sure of what he is saying. Chrétien could not have considered anything as occurring within ″the conventions of courtly love″ since the concept was only pinned down by Matthew Paris in 1883. Perhaps you mean fin’ amour. But where are these supposed conventions stated clearly?

If you claim that anything occurs within some conventions, you surely must have a source. No fair making it up.

And no fair claiming Yvain stole Lady Laudine’s lands. Laudine freely granted them to Yvain after she realized that this was the man who had slain her former husband and just as easily took them away again when Yvain broke his vow. That Yvain apparently accepts Laudine’s right to do this is, it seems to me, the only point in which the tale accepts the supposed tenants of courtly love, in that Yvain accepts his lady’s superiority.

And this is a romance of marriage, in which according to some of those pushing what some now call courtly love true love cannot occur.

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by jallanite

This and other comments I have read make perfect sense to me. I could provide other quotes but to what point? You believe what you want to believe and ignore the evidence and resort to name-calling. Is that really the best you can do? You can easily look up Norris J. Lacy on the web and see that he is at least one of the most prominent and respected medievalists of our day and well versed in what most people would call courtly love literature.

Name calling? The source you quoted was inundated with equivocation: "may", "likely", "probably" - is Lacy a dissembling scholar or is he running for office? In either case, his delivery was weak. You insulted Joseph Campbell, trying to minimize his points by claiming that he "greatly oversimplifies", and you ignored the quotes from The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition (1936) by C.S. Lewis, Tolkien's friend and peer, and since the question is whether Tolkien's work exhibited courtly love, then what Lewis referred to in his book is far more cogent to the discussion than a professor who can't make a single straightforward statement.

Originally Posted by jallanite

You have really only provided two romances and ignored the many, many, many other medieval romances that don’t fit your idea of what people should have been reading.

I offered the most popular of their time. The most popular. I also mentioned The Canterbury Tales and The Decameron, both immensely popular and highly influential to this day. In addition, I referred to Yvain, the Knight and the Lion and Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart. If you'd like more, then read Marie de France, who wrote Bisclavret (which I also mentioned) and Equitan, both dealing with adultery; in fact, over half the lais Marie de France wrote concerned illicit or adulterous lovers. See also Chevrefoil (a Tristanian poem), and Yonec (a tale of a woman in a loveless marriage who has a child through an adulterous affair).

Also, Gottfried von Strassburg's Tristan, Guillame Loris and Jean de Meung's Roman de la Rose (incredibly popular in the 13th and 14th century - stirring an international literary debate over courtly love, with Christine di Pizan writing Querelle du Roman de la Rose and Le Livre des trois vertus in opposition to the work and to courtly love in general), and the convention outlived the Middle Ages altogether and can be found in the works of Tasso and Ariosto. I am also not going to dig up the hundreds of lais and poems written by every trouvere, troubadour or minnesinger who spoke of courtly love.

I also remain contextual, which is why I keep referring to the 14th century in regards to courtly love, because from a historical standpoint that is when it was wound inextricably with the courts of England and France, discussed and debated most regularly, and used in a real-life sense like a religion of love, often to disastrous effect.

Originally Posted by jallanite

You are like a broken record, not seeing anything but courtly love and not seeing anything outside French tales. At least some English were also as well or instead reading things like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Havelok the Dane, Floris and Blauncheflour, and various other works. Even French works contain many in which no love-affair even occurs or in which it is hardly treated in a courtly manner, for example Huon de Bordeaux or Le Roman de Mélusine by Jean d’Arras. Even the French Vulgate Merlin was adapted into English by three different authors and it has almost nothing in it that anyone would call courtly love.

I didn't refer to those because they have nothing to do with the literary conventions of courtly love. I also didn't mention fabliaux like Reynard the Fox, and neither did I mention Von Eisenbach's Parzifal. I never stated anywhere that every story written from 1100 to 1500 AD concerned courtly love. Neither did I refer back to the chansons de geste that are not of the courtly love tradition. You keep wanting to muddy the waters with superfluity.

Originally Posted by jallanite

The Odyssey, the Aeneid, and other classical works and works from Germanic tradition also have lots of adultery. And those traditions also provide tales in which there almost no sexual activity. You are so overstating the presence of courtly love.

I didn't mention 1960s films like Mrs. Robinson either. Because that would be out of context. Context. Use it. But in another discussion, please. I see no point in continuing this one.