It was long. And not because I talked too much, for too long, and people failed to shut me up: I do not do that because it is mean, rude, obnoxious, arrogant, inconsiderate, disrespectful, and a disgrace to The Profession. Also because I despise people who go over time. And people who talk badly. And though I get grumpy about this sort of thingβespecially given the physical pain of having to sit still, ideally on a badly-designed chair, through a bad talk badly deliveredβI am not a complete misanthrope, I do like some human beings.
An epilogue in guise of conclusion shows how the idea of courtly love next evolves in French romance, but with its main continuations being in Catalan poetry. Good evening. My paper this evening falls into two somewhat unequal parts; the first is on the courtly love debate β as an exercise in a sort of metaliterary history. It is consuming, not necessarily consummated, and often unrequited. The courts of the king and higher nobility typically moved around from one domain to another through the year.
This had practical advantages for the control of territory and its network of seneschals and baillifs. The court may have been one held for a certain time by an aristocrat with sufficient resources and the necessary accomodations, say around a feast, wedding, or tournament.
The phenomenon is supposed to be visible in Occitan and French lyric poetry, and in French romance, particularly in the 12 th century. It is generally accepted to have first flourished in the courts of the Anjou, Poitou, and Aquitaine. It then spread around Europe, via the mobility of courts and court poets. Above all, it spread through the Aquitanain courts and their networks of influence. In order to put the subsequent debate in proper perspective, I turn now to the original article in some detail.
The bulk of the article is on variants of the Lancelot story and its sources, in a standard 19 th -century quest for the Ur-Text. This second part. He starts out with some descriptions of this idea of love:.
