Chart the changing temper of the High Middle Ages, as reflected in the romance and the literature of courtly love

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

From the Crusades emerged the medieval romance, a fictitious tale of love and adventure that became the most popular form of literary entertainment in the West between the years 1200 and 1500. The "spice" of the typical medieval romance was an illicit relationship or forbidden liaison between a man and woman of the upper class. During the Middle Ages, marriage among members of the nobility was usually an alliance formed in the interest of securing land. In such circumstances, romantic love was more likely to flourish outside marriage. Filled with bloody combat, supernatural events, and romantic alliances, medieval romances introduced a new and complex picture of human conduct and courtship associated with the so-called code of courtly love.
Courtly love, as the name suggests, was a phenomenon cultivated in the courts of the medieval nobility. Characterized by the longing of a nobleman for a (usually unattainable) woman, the courtly love tradition, with its "rules" of wooing and winning a lady, laid the basis for concepts of romantic love in Western literature and life. This romantic love was meant to have a purifying and ennobling influence on the lover; to suffer for true love was noble. The courtly love tradition contributed to shaping modern Western concepts of gender and courtship. It also worked to define the romantic perception of women as objects, particularly objects of reward for the performance of brave deeds. For although courtly love elevated the woman as worthy of adoration, it defined her exclusively in terms of the interests of men.