Rocio's Courtly Love Presentation Epilogue

I would like to take up my oral —now virtual— presentation from the point where I rushed through -- if I may and it please my fellow bloggers -- and I apologize for going over the time limit, Dr. Wenthe.

Could there have been the possibility of a court of adulterous love at that time? What was going on at the time with regards to women, the literature read, the Church, etc. This was relevant, I think, but too broad a question to answer but here is my brief, incomplete attempt:

• “Women were assumed to be inherently inferior to men and properly guided by men…”; “Wives had to balance carefully their influence over their husbands: moving men towards wise decisions, while not making decisions themselves...”; “An ideal wife spoke publicly through her husband or spoke not at all” (Judith Bennet, Companion to Britain in the later Middle Ages).
• “Most medieval literature was intended to reinforce the status quo” (SH Rigby/ Comp. to Britain in the later Middle Ages)…Now I don’t think this is quite right but this was a quote I pulled after skimming this article at last minute, so this is something that needs further research because what we have been reading is quite provocative...
• It was a time when the Church was defining what were grounds for annulment, marriage practices [were you married if you consummated or if you took vows?] Tasker says Chretien as all medieval authors wanted to instruct, and he wanted to engage his readers in a process of reflection. Public opinion was against marriage of adulterers, a council said they could marry after making penance, and had to be innocent of the husband’s death, among other things. (Joan Tasker Grimbert)
• Courtly romances reflect fantasies of the aristocracy because reality was very different, stricter. Yes, noblemen had more sexual freedom than noblewomen, but Church set strict limits even on marital sex. Husbands, especially royal ones, were very unhappy if their estate passed on to children who were not his, so punishment for adultery was very severe. When Phillip of Flanders (contemporary of Marie de Champagne) caught his wife Isabelle cheating on him he drowned the man in a sewer (or was he beaten to death? I read in another book he was beaten). (Sarah Kay)
So…Donaldson logically says you cannot define courtly love based on all the literature of the Middle Ages and there’s not enough good historical information about medieval daily life, Sarah Kay says the literature was not really a reflection of the reality, and Capellanus’ manual was erroneously seen as historical or sociological text for a very long time.
If the information we do have says reality was very strict, why would Marie commission Chretien and Capellanus to write these romances and manual, respectively? Benton says Marie´s husband, Henri, wouldn’t have let her get away with it (=commissioning Knight of the Cart and being quoted in Capellanus’ manual as saying such immoral judgments), so Joseph Duggan says Marie probably commissioned Lancelot after 1181 the year her husband died, and that’s why the manual was written in 1185. Both Phillip of Flanders (yes, the same one that drowned the other guy) and Marie became widowed almost at the same time, and between 1182 and 1183 Phillip wanted to marry Marie, but he suddenly stopped pursuing her and married a Portuguese princess instead. Had Phillip read the manual she commissioned and did that change his mind? Did Marie have this 'other side' of her personality he did not like? Maybe she wrote the manual, maybe she was the lais-writing Marie de France, after all. Who would have access to all those noblewomen quoted in the manual? How close were Chretien and Marie? Karl Uitti is very suggestive in his 1997 essay and supports Dr. Wenthe’s comment of Chretien’s serious investment in The Knight of the Cart (Lancelot) (as opposed to writing under duress):
Without belaboring the point, we might note the parallelism between Chrétien's avowed painne et antancion in the clerkly service of his Lady, Countess Marie, and the trials and determination evinced by the chivalric Lancelot in his knightly devotion to Queen Guenevere. A certain equivalence is adumbrated between clerkly service (clergie) and chevalerie, both placed, so to speak, at the feet of an admirable and fully meritorious Lady. The effect in both cases is hyperbolic, giving a somewhat humorous cast to the romance, which, however, does not really counter the real seriousness and devotion with which the two ladies are being served. Hyperbole exists alongside authentic devotion and, with Chrétien's artistry, is made to support it, not detract from it. (The Charrette Project)

(Painne et antancion = diligence and intellectual capacity)

I’m thinking Uitti was on to something. There’s a mirror there, somewhere. Sorry, if I end this post so speculatively. I will take up the Cart in another post.

And the handout with the map, it was meant – and now in retrospect this looks very silly— but I wanted you to scribble arrows, according to the list next to the map because I wanted you to trace the route of the (courtly) love concept as it evolved over time according to Irving Singer. It is chronological but without dates, if that makes sense, it starts with Spain (not shown obviously but I trust your geographical sense) in descending order, etc.

And here are details of Irving Singer’s book which really made me want to know more about the medieval mind.

Singer, Irving. The Nature of Love. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984