Courtly love
Developments: love - Europe - galanterie - Middle Ages - chivalric romance (literary genre)
Courtly love
Image sourced here.
Definition
Courtly love was a particular ideal and practice during the Middle Ages in Europe, which had its origins in courtly circles of Aquitaine, where William, Duke of Aquitaine, was one of the first troubadour poets, of Provence, where it was known as fin'amor of Champagne and ducal Burgundy. Courtly love was an aspect of a renewed pleasure in the refinements of the better kind of life, a first stirring of neopaganism in the "delightful understanding" or gai saber of Provençal poets, beginning about the time of the First Crusade. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courtly_love [Sept 2005]
your Amazon recommendations