COURTLY LOVE Definition & Meaning

courtly love

a highly stylized code of behavior popular chiefly from the 12th to the 14th century that prescribed the rules of conduct between lovers, advocating idealized but illicit love, and which fostered an extensive medieval literature based on this tradition.

courtly love

a tradition represented in Western European literature between the 12th and the 14th centuries, idealizing love between a knight and a revered (usually married) lady

courtly love

A set of attitudes toward love that were strong in the Middle Ages . According to the ideal of courtly love, a knight or nobleman worshiped a woman of high birth, and his love for her inspired him to do great things on the battlefield and elsewhere. There was usually no physical relationship or marriage between them, however; the woman was usually married to another man.

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First recorded in 1895–1900

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Examples have not been reviewed.

The motto was written in French, the language of courtly love.

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But there is no noblesse oblige or courtly love, no dragons, witchy women or aggrandizing British accents.

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At the center of Groff’s story is Marie de France, a shadowy writer known today as the author of a series of courtly love poems.

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The contrivance might fit the novel’s theme of courtly love, but it’s hard to buy the premise of Nell as a gauche and pining scientist.

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“It was more like courtly love,” she said.

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