I tried a search, but someone obviously forgot to feed the poor hamsters.
Anyway. Lately I’ve seen or heard references to this. One claim was that “No one would fall in love, had that person not previously seen couples in love”. This tends to be the hen and the egg, but I guess if it all started as fiction, then it could be true. Someplace else, someone claimed exactly what’s in the header - that Italian bards/poets invented the whole thing.
I guess it’s all refering to ‘romantic love’ and ‘falling in love’ with violins, flowers and chocolate. It seems certain that love between parents and child, desire, friendship ASF was around before this.
But is all that fluttery feeling in the stomach something that’s just an invention? Any doper that knows or can come up with more educated guesses, than I can?
The song of songs, which is Solomon’s.
Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine.
Because of the savour of thy good ointments thy name is as ointment poured forth, there fore do the virgins love thee.
Draw me, we will run after me, the king hath brought me into his chambers: we will be glad and rejoice in thee, we will remember thy love more than wine: the upright love thee.
I am black, but comely: O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.
Look not upon me, because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me: my mother’s children were angry with me; they made me the keeper of the vineyards, but my own vineyard I have not kept.
Tell me, O thou who my soul loveth, where thou feedest, where thou makest thy flock to rest at noon: for why should I be as one that turnest aside by the flocks of thy companions?
Well it obviously wasn’t invented at that point – people did fall in love – but the expectations were different. Marriage was pretty much a transaction and if the couple bonded, that was a bonus. Outside of marriage, any infatuation was primarily sexual.
The bards originally sang about “courtly love,” which isn’t what it sounds like. It was the example of someone loving another who was already married (and not inclined toward adultery). So the lover would tragically pine for his love. The songs would sing of the sadness. They struck a chord – because marriage was a transaction, people rarely married someone they loved, and this was expecially true in the upper classes who listened to the music.
And expectations slowly changed. By Shakespeare’s time, it was expected a couple would be in love when they married (see the scenes between Henry and Cathering in “Henry V” – it’s quite clear that it never happened that way, but that Shakespeare was writing to fulfill audiences’ expectations). I don’t know if it was the Italians or the French, but the songs of courtly love were a big influence on our modern conception of love.
You could also add that most of the great early Japanese litterature is heavily centered on love, and a very romantic kind at that. Those are works that precede the 14th century by several hundred years.
I heard this “love was invented by medieval bards” theory in an English lit. class a long time ago. It seems as preposterous now, as it seemed then.
There are truly mountains of litterature that predate the European medieval period and feature romantic love. You could also approach the question from a purely physiological prespective.
What I really want to know is: who came up with this seemingly half-baked hypothesis, and how did it ever get enough credence to make it to otherwise fairly educated circles?
I’m sorry I missed your post the first time around.
Again, I refer you to early Japanese litterature, more specifically The Tale of Ise (c. 900 ce), a collection of (very) short stories. It’s almost entirely made up of this kind of courtly, impossible love. Lovers, separated by their social positions, politics, marriage, parents, etc. share love poems and songs. It’s all very courtly and not very Italian.
Some friendly advice? Love is a dangerous drug. Use only as directed. Consult your shrink if you experience any side-effects while using this drug…or, rather once you stop using this drug. - Jinx
The unique contribution of late medieval Europe was not “romance” but “courtly love”. In “courtly love”, the relationship was taken to a positively religious note. The ideal was that the “beloved” (always a woman) was to become an object of worship. She was expected to indulge in all manner of cruel “testing” to which the “lover” was to submit. An excellent example of this nonsense is the Arthurian tale of Sir Gaharis. Likewise, in the real world, there was the “Court of Love” held by Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. One of her flunkies, Andrew the Chaplain, wrote a manual of “courtly love”, which offered the following “wisdom”:
and
That’s right, “love” according to the nobility of the 13th and 14th centuries, was something for the nobility. Lower-class women were simply to be taken if desired.
Likewise, love and marriage had nothing to do with each other. Indeed, it was often presumed that they were positively antithetical. The idea that marriage and love going together was the ideal had to wait for a later era in the West, for an era of the middle class.
Most of the ideas about courtly love referenced in this thread come from C. S. Lewis, in The Allegory of Love. And the theory starts to sound less half-baked when you realize that he’s talking not so much about love itself, but a particular way of thinking and talking about love.
However, Lewis got a few things wrong, or at least oversimplified them; for instance, not all “courtly love” literature involves an adulterous relationship or an unattainable beloved. Chretien de Troyes’ Yvain, for instance, ends with a happy marriage, as do many of Marie de France’s lais.
I was under the impression that Jason of Iolcos and Medea of Colchis were pretty taken with one another. It was also my understanding that their story significantly pre-dated any 14th century Italian Bards.
