The Afterlife, Reincarnation, and Courtly Love

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Morthoron

Is it that you are being contrary, or is it merely some insatiable need to flex your distended erudition?

Enough with the insults. No, I am merely writing what I believe is correct. And from my point of view you keep evading answering any of my points directly which tends to confirm any belief I have that I am correct.

The original question, and the only one I was referring to throughout this discussion was: did Tolkien's work exhibit the characteristics of courtly love? It was the discussion I was having with Idril prior to your voyage on the Good Ship Prolix, matey. Disemboguing discurions into Welsh "streams" that have nothing to do with courtly love were unnecessary and out of context. Obviously, you had a desperate desire to press your agenda, and talk about everything but courtly love. Congratulations, you succeeded brilliantly. In short, I never was talking about medieval literature in general, but the literary convention of courtly love. And, not surprisingly, this literature of courtly love did eminate from France and Provence and was read also by the Anglo-Norman court in England and in the Italian city-states. What part of that did you not get?

One reason Tolkien could so easily for the most part ignore courtly love in his somewhat medieval-styled The Lord of the Rings is that many, perhaps most medieval literature, was not about courtly love. Even stories that contained adultery were not always about courtly love. That seems to me to be in context for this thread.

I could say about you ″obviously, you had a desperate desire to press your agenda″ but that would be gratuitously insulting and only avoids discussing the actual matter.

When having a discussion about whether or not Tolkien's works exhibited courtly love, droning on about literature that has no relation to the aspects of courtly love is muddying the water. In fact, it is damming the stream, choking off the waterways and clogging the sewers.

I am damming your words by opposing them? I am preventing your free speech? Obviously not. Your metaphor fails, completely.

I would say and have said previously that Tolkien's work does not exhibit the characteristics of courtly love. If he were trying to exhibit the characteristics of courtly love or fin'amour (which I do not believe to be the case), then yes, he would be using a highly bowdlerized, sanitized, abridged and purified form, hence my use of the modifier "If anything" in relation to "bowderlize". This is particularly true when aspects of courtly love were put into practice beyond the literary record and its use by nobles in English and French courts as noted extensively in the historical record.

What you said instead was “If anything, Tolkien bowdlerized the idea of courtly love, …″ which tells me that you were entertaining the possibility that Tolkien was perhaps bowdlerizing the idea of courtly love.

That still seems ludicrous to me, but apparently you did not intend your statement to be taken as strongly as I took it.

You defined courtly love as: ″Courtly love, in the medieval literary sense, is guilty love …”. But then, by insisting that Chrétien’s Yvain is a tale of courtly love you include a story with not even a suggestion of guilty love. Sources I have checked most don’t mention that Yvain is a tale of courtly love. Only John Jay Parry in his Introduction to his translation of Andreas Capellanus’ The Art of Courtly Love says that of Chétien’s poem only his Lancelot is a full-fledged tale of courtly love and that in Yvain Chrétien “rejects the idea of an adulterous love, which he did not like, but, retains the other conventions of courtly love, which apparently he did.”

Certainly I see Yvain as a tale influenced by the ideas of courtly love, but not a full-fledged tale of courtly love because Yvain very quickly marries the protagonist. Ovid stated that husbands and wives cannot love each other and Andreas Capellanus indicates the same, as do other undenied writers who are pushing courtly love. If this be taken as a given, then Yvain is not a romance of courtly love, although influenced by some courtly love conventions.

I introduced Welsh into my discussion of the Tristan stories only because it factually is one of the four streams of medieval Tristan stories and felt it would be dishonest to leave it out as I originally intended. That was the only mention I made of Welsh tales. You are the one who has mentioned Welsh tales again and again, as a stick with which to beat me over the head instead of responding to the points I did raise hoping for meaningful response.

Noting that it is you (not me) who brought in The Mabinogion, that contains one story called “The Lady of the Fountain″ which duplicates Chrétien’s Yvain. Is that therefore also a tale of courtly love, according to your definition. If not, then why not? Perhaps because it does not reproduce most of Chrétien’s internal monologs on love? But the plot, including the marriage of the protagonist to the widow of the man he had slain is common to both stories and for some reason that I do not understand that to you speaks courtly love.

This is an honest question. I really don’t understand how one would include Yvain among the romances of courtly love. Even just provide source literature that claims Yvain is a romance of courtly love if you know any.

If anyone is following this besides Morthoron they can read an English translation of Yvain as the fourth story at http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/831 and can read an English translation of “The Lady of the Fountain” at http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/fountain.htm .