The Afterlife, Reincarnation, and Courtly Love

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by jallanite

What of Beren and Lúthien? From the published Silmarillion:

But as she [Lúthien] looked on him [Beren], doom fell upon her, and she loved him; yet she slipped away from his arms and vanished from his sight even as the day was breaking.

What do you imagine Lúthien was doing in Beren’s arms and on subsequent meetings when she rejoined him again? I admit that this account is not explicit and the verse versions published in The Lays of Beleriand are also not explicit. In contrast, Chrétien has Perceval share a bed for the night with Blanchefleur but explicitly indicates that no sex occurred, not something one would expect in someone pushing courtly love as commonly understood.

There's a great Downs thread on the sexual nature of Beren and Luthien's relationship started by Lush: Ooh la la Luthien. Mark 12_30 provides some relevant quotations on elven marriage from "Laws and Customs of the Eldar" (HoME, Morgoth's Ring).

[jallanite]

The thread http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showthread.php?t=2427 was an excellent one. It indicates what I expected, that you can read into the Beren story that Beren and Lúthien were chaste until they eventually married, or that they began to have sex when they first met.

But, as pointed out, Tolkien does not even bother to relate any marriage of Beren and Lúthien.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by jallanite

The thread http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showthread.php?t=2427 was an excellent one. It indicates what I expected, that you can read into the Beren story that Beren and Lúthien were chaste until they eventually married, or that they began to have sex when they first met.

But, as pointed out, Tolkien does not even bother to relate any marriage of Beren and Lúthien.

Well, if, as he wrote in Laws and Customs of the Eldar,

Originally Posted by Mark quoting Tolkien

It was the act of bodily union that achieved marriage, and after which the indissoluble bond was complete

,

then he wouldn't have to describe any marriage ceremony, especially given Beren's escape from the gift. He seems to partake of Luthien's elven heritage. When Arwen gives up her elven heritage, she becomes human, like Aragorn, and so their love follows human conventions.

Perhaps it means that elves didn't need rituals but men (and hobbits) did.

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by jallanite

From Norris J. Lacy in The New Arthurian Encyclopedia, the article on Courtly Love:

COURTLY LOVE, a term first used by Gaston Paris in an 1883 article. It may well be a misleading designation for the medieval phenomenon it is supposed to identify. A good many scholars criticize the term and propose that it be abandoned. That is unlikely to occur, owing to its familiarity and usefulness. It is often, and probably erroneously, used interchangeably with fin’amors, which is the proper term for a conception of love propounded by the Provençal troubadours. A question that has occupied a good many scholars is whether courtly love, in northern France especially, was a historical and cultural phenomenon or simply a literary convention.

Lacy continues. I realize that most scholars do not deny that the tradition existed, but they do disagree, often vehemently, on what exactly was meant by what they call courtly love by different writers.

So, your source claims the term courtly love "may well be misleading" (strong conviction there!), but he agrees to the term's "usefulness". He agrees that the "tradition existed", but just does not like the term itself. In addition, he uses the utterly weak phrase "probably erroneously" in regards to the interchangeability of "courtly love" and "fin'amors". Bravo! This scholarly gibberish equates to nothing but equivocation. Usually posters use sources to bolster their argument, not weaken it.

Originally Posted by jallanite

I am so aware. However much of it applies only to works in the Thomas tradition, not to other verse Tristan material and the prose material. You seem not be aware that there were four main streams of Tristan material in European tales: the Welsh tradition, the so-called folk tradition found in the works of Béroul and Eilhart von Oberge, the more refined so-called courtly tradition in the version of Thomas and adaptations into other languages, and the later immense prose romances in four main versions with adaptations into other languages.

I am certainly aware of different Tristan traditions, but I am speaking in context to the subject at hand, courtly love and Tolkien, not layering the discussion with superfluous and spurious addenda. When referring to the “Welsh tradition” it would be just as contextually useless to discuss the development of the Arthurian cycle prior to Chrétien de Troyes. Gildas, Geofrey of Monmouth and Wace have little to do with the discussion of courtly love in L’ Morte d’Arthur or Yvain, the Knight of the Lion, so why throw in the Mabinogion, or even a possible Irish antecedent like The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gráinne?

The courtly love literary tradition is markedly different in approach to the earlier traditions, and it is the Prose Tristan that was the most popular version in the High Middle Ages and throughout the 14th century, and was influential in Malory’s development of Le Morte d’Arthur, the most popular of all the retellings of the Arthurian Cycle. The “common stream (or branch)” of the Tristan saga, as written by the like of Béroul, is noncourtly and unchivalric, bearing more resemblance to the Dark Ages than the High or Late Middle Ages, and it was not the version popular in English, German, French or Italian courts.

Originally Posted by jallanite

Not all tales of adultery need also be tales of what some modern writers call courtly love.

And yet the most popular exemplars of courtly love tales in the 13th, 14th and 15th century, Prose Tristran, Châtelain de Coucy, and Le Morte d’Arthur, each have adultery as a main theme, a cuckolded husband and the tragic demise of the lovers. In addition, both Chaucer and Boccaccio had as their ultimate influences courtly romances. Courtly love abounds in The Canterbury Tales: The Miller’s Tale, The Franklin’s Tale, The Merchant’s Tale, etc., are all of the courtly tradition, which Chaucer was immersed in at the court of the Duke of Lancaster. All of these, even the fabliaux of the Miller’s Tale (a direct criticism of courtly love) has adultery or the coveting of another man’s wife as its central premise. Chaucer even uses the lusty Wife of Bath as the antithesis to the courtly love found in The Knight’s Tale, and she says straight out that courtly love is artificial. In her tale, the knight goes against all chivalry and rapes a girl.

C.S. Lewis in his The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition speaks of his “theory of adultery” in the courtly love tradition, using Lancelot and Guinevere as the most apt example. He characterizes the idiosyncratic conventions that first surrounded courtly love as "the peculiar form which it first took; the four marks of Humility, Courtesy, Adultery, and the Religion of Love". Lewis then goes on to say:

“Two things prevented the men of that age from connecting their ideal of romantic and passionate love with marriage. The first is, of course, the actual practice of feudal society. Marriages had nothing to do with love, and no ‘nonsense’ about marriage was tolerated. All matches were matches of interest, and, worse still, of an interest that was continually changing. When the alliance which had answered would answer no longer, the husband’s object was to get rid of the lady as quickly as possible. Marriages were frequently dissolved. The same woman who was the lady and the ‘dearest dread’ of her vassals was often little better than a piece of property to her husband…Any idealization of sexual love, in a society where marriage is purely utilitarian, must begin by being an idealization of adultery.”

In A Handbook of Troubadours by F. Akehurst and J. Davis, the authors are even more pointed:

“Whether the married lady of the songs is historical or fictional does not alter the fact that the nature of fin’amor, as poetically articulated in these cansos, remains adulterous beyond any doubt.

Originally Posted by jallanite

Campbell unfortunately so greatly oversimplifies that his work in that area is almost useless.

Replace the words “greatly oversimplifies” with the phrase “I don’t agree with Campbell” and we’re more likely closer to the truth.

Originally Posted by jallanite

Yes, I have read all of extant Chrétien de Troyes. That Chrétien so concentrates on marriage is why many commentators don’t think that Chrétien was much influenced by so-called courtly love, at least in its extreme form. I do not see that marrying the widow of a knight whom one has slain should be seen as an aspect of courtly love. I suspect that you may be seeing something you call “courtly love” when the text only tells of love by one person of another.

I would suggest that if a villain slew a knight, took his widow to wife and stole his lands and title, he would be viewed as reprehensible, yet here de Troyes envisages the character as heroic within the conventions of courtly love, which are indeed skewed and artificial, and certainly against the societal norms of the times.

I'll reply to the rest as I have time.

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Morthoron

In addition, he uses the utterly weak phrase "probably erroneously" in regards to the interchangeability of "courtly love" and "fin'amors". Bravo! This scholarly gibberish equates to nothing but equivocation. Usually posters use sources to bolster their argument, not weaken it.

This and other comments I have read make perfect sense to me. I could provide other quotes but to what point? You believe what you want to believe and ignore the evidence and resort to name-calling. Is that really the best you can do? You can easily look up Norris J. Lacy on the web and see that he is at least one of the most prominent and respected medievalists of our day and well versed in what most people would call courtly love literature.

I suggest you begin by looking at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courtly_love . I realize that source is not the best. But it mostly agrees with what I have learned though other channels.

I am certainly aware of different Tristan traditions, but I am speaking in context to the subject at hand, courtly love and Tolkien, not layering the discussion with superfluous and spurious addenda. When referring to the “Welsh tradition” it would be just as contextually useless to discuss the development of the Arthurian cycle prior to Chrétien de Troyes. Gildas, Geofrey of Monmouth and Wace have little to do with the discussion of courtly love in L’ Morte d’Arthur or Yvain, the Knight of the Lion, so why throw in the Mabinogion, or even a possible Irish antecedent like The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gráinne?

It is hard to know what the other person in a discussion knows. But it don’t see any courtly love in Yvain.

But even the courtly romances of Tristan fall far beneath the idealogy imagined for courtly love. Even in the courtly romances Tristan does not hang on every word of Yseult like Lancelot does to Guenevere in Chrétien. That Tristan goes so far as to marry another woman is still part of this version of the tale, something not to be thought of if courtly love as commonly understood is the guide to Tristan’s actions.

This version appears to be written to fit the tastes of the courtiers of the time, a modification of an earlier form of the tale, but far from the ideal courtly love. Tristan is to a degree a more courtly knight, who does not kill any of the lepers from whom he rescues Yseult, unlike in other versions. Tristan does not simply camp out in the forest or live in a deserted mansion, but dwells in a fantastic cave built by giants. He later has a fantastic hall built by a giant with a statue of Yseult within.

The courtly love literary tradition is markedly different in approach to the earlier traditions, and it is the Prose Tristan that was the most popular version in the High Middle Ages and throughout the 14th century, and was influential in Malory’s development of Le Morte d’Arthur, the most popular of all the retellings of the Arthurian Cycle.

While more courtly than the folk version or Welsh version, it is more chivalric than the so-called courtly version. And it introduces Dinadan in a great many episodes, Dinadan being very much an anti-courtly and anti-chivalric character who pokes fun at chivalric pretensions.

The “common stream (or branch)” of the Tristan saga, as written by the like of Béroul, is noncourtly and unchivalric, bearing more resemblance to the Dark Ages than the High or Late Middle Ages, and it was not the version popular in English, German, French or Italian courts.

So by medieval you mean only “late medieval″? A convenient way to throw out a large body of medieval works.

And yet the most popular exemplars of courtly love tales in the 13th, 14th and 15th century, Prose Tristran, Châtelain de Coucy, and Le Morte d’Arthur, each have adultery as a main theme, a cuckolded husband and the tragic demise of the lovers.

You really shouldn’t be including Le Morte d’Arthur as Lancelot and Guenevere’s deaths in that version are not intended to be seen as tragic. They are arguably the best deaths possible under the circumstances. And Le Morte d’Arthur was only written in 1470 and so obviously not one of the most popular tales of the 13th, 14th, and most of the 15th centuries.

You have really only provided two romances and ignored the many, many, many other medieval romances that don’t fit your idea of what people should have been reading.

You are like a broken record, not seeing anything but courtly love and not seeing anything outside French tales. At least some English were also as well or instead reading things like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Havelok the Dane, Floris and Blauncheflour, and various other works. Even French works contain many in which no love-affair even occurs or in which it is hardly treated in a courtly manner, for example Huon de Bordeaux or Le Roman de Mélusine by Jean d’Arras. Even the French Vulgate Merlin was adapted into English by three different authors and it has almost nothing in it that anyone would call courtly love.

In addition, both Chaucer and Boccaccio had as their ultimate influences courtly romances. Courtly love abounds in The Canterbury Tales: The Miller’s Tale, The Franklin’s Tale, The Merchant’s Tale, etc., are all of the courtly tradition, which Chaucer was immersed in at the court of the Duke of Lancaster. All of these, even the fabliaux of the Miller’s Tale (a direct criticism of courtly love) has adultery or the coveting of another man’s wife as its central premise.

The Odyssey, the Aeneid, and other classical works and works from Germanic tradition also have lots of adultery. And those traditions also provide tales in which there almost no sexual activity. You are so overstating the presence of courtly love.

Replace the words “greatly oversimplifies” with the phrase “I don’t agree with Campbell” and we’re more likely closer to the truth.

Sticks and stones ... Call me a liar if you want. Who are the we of which you speak?

I have never denied, ever, that tales of adultery are a commonplace in medieval literature. Even the Bible tells of David and Bathsheba. But also a commonplace are tales in which adultery never occurs

I would suggest that if a villain slew a knight, took his widow to wife and stole his lands and title, he would be viewed as reprehensible, yet here de Troyes envisages the character as heroic within the conventions of courtly love, which are indeed skewed and artificial, and certainly against the societal norms of the times.

Provide a medieval source of your idea that Yvain was in any way following some courtly tradition in marrying the widow of the man he had killed. I note the word would which is often a sign that the speaker is not very sure of what he is saying. Chrétien could not have considered anything as occurring within ″the conventions of courtly love″ since the concept was only pinned down by Matthew Paris in 1883. Perhaps you mean fin’ amour. But where are these supposed conventions stated clearly?

If you claim that anything occurs within some conventions, you surely must have a source. No fair making it up.

And no fair claiming Yvain stole Lady Laudine’s lands. Laudine freely granted them to Yvain after she realized that this was the man who had slain her former husband and just as easily took them away again when Yvain broke his vow. That Yvain apparently accepts Laudine’s right to do this is, it seems to me, the only point in which the tale accepts the supposed tenants of courtly love, in that Yvain accepts his lady’s superiority.

And this is a romance of marriage, in which according to some of those pushing what some now call courtly love true love cannot occur.

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by jallanite

This and other comments I have read make perfect sense to me. I could provide other quotes but to what point? You believe what you want to believe and ignore the evidence and resort to name-calling. Is that really the best you can do? You can easily look up Norris J. Lacy on the web and see that he is at least one of the most prominent and respected medievalists of our day and well versed in what most people would call courtly love literature.

Name calling? The source you quoted was inundated with equivocation: "may", "likely", "probably" - is Lacy a dissembling scholar or is he running for office? In either case, his delivery was weak. You insulted Joseph Campbell, trying to minimize his points by claiming that he "greatly oversimplifies", and you ignored the quotes from The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition (1936) by C.S. Lewis, Tolkien's friend and peer, and since the question is whether Tolkien's work exhibited courtly love, then what Lewis referred to in his book is far more cogent to the discussion than a professor who can't make a single straightforward statement.

Originally Posted by jallanite

You have really only provided two romances and ignored the many, many, many other medieval romances that don’t fit your idea of what people should have been reading.

I offered the most popular of their time. The most popular. I also mentioned The Canterbury Tales and The Decameron, both immensely popular and highly influential to this day. In addition, I referred to Yvain, the Knight and the Lion and Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart. If you'd like more, then read Marie de France, who wrote Bisclavret (which I also mentioned) and Equitan, both dealing with adultery; in fact, over half the lais Marie de France wrote concerned illicit or adulterous lovers. See also Chevrefoil (a Tristanian poem), and Yonec (a tale of a woman in a loveless marriage who has a child through an adulterous affair).

Also, Gottfried von Strassburg's Tristan, Guillame Loris and Jean de Meung's Roman de la Rose (incredibly popular in the 13th and 14th century - stirring an international literary debate over courtly love, with Christine di Pizan writing Querelle du Roman de la Rose and Le Livre des trois vertus in opposition to the work and to courtly love in general), and the convention outlived the Middle Ages altogether and can be found in the works of Tasso and Ariosto. I am also not going to dig up the hundreds of lais and poems written by every trouvere, troubadour or minnesinger who spoke of courtly love.

I also remain contextual, which is why I keep referring to the 14th century in regards to courtly love, because from a historical standpoint that is when it was wound inextricably with the courts of England and France, discussed and debated most regularly, and used in a real-life sense like a religion of love, often to disastrous effect.

Originally Posted by jallanite

You are like a broken record, not seeing anything but courtly love and not seeing anything outside French tales. At least some English were also as well or instead reading things like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Havelok the Dane, Floris and Blauncheflour, and various other works. Even French works contain many in which no love-affair even occurs or in which it is hardly treated in a courtly manner, for example Huon de Bordeaux or Le Roman de Mélusine by Jean d’Arras. Even the French Vulgate Merlin was adapted into English by three different authors and it has almost nothing in it that anyone would call courtly love.

I didn't refer to those because they have nothing to do with the literary conventions of courtly love. I also didn't mention fabliaux like Reynard the Fox, and neither did I mention Von Eisenbach's Parzifal. I never stated anywhere that every story written from 1100 to 1500 AD concerned courtly love. Neither did I refer back to the chansons de geste that are not of the courtly love tradition. You keep wanting to muddy the waters with superfluity.

Originally Posted by jallanite

The Odyssey, the Aeneid, and other classical works and works from Germanic tradition also have lots of adultery. And those traditions also provide tales in which there almost no sexual activity. You are so overstating the presence of courtly love.

I didn't mention 1960s films like Mrs. Robinson either. Because that would be out of context. Context. Use it. But in another discussion, please. I see no point in continuing this one.

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Morthoron

Name calling? The source you quoted was inundated with equivocation: "may", "likely", "probably" - is Lacy a dissembling scholar or is he running for office? In either case, his delivery was weak.

A medieval scholar “who can’t make a single straightforward statement″ would have not reached the level of eminence and number of publications that Lacy has. Lacy is naturally choosing to not make straightforward statements when discussing something in an encyclopedia article which is controversial. You would apparently prefer that he be dishonest by making straightforward statements. But that would not fit with what he is here writing about. Anyone who wishes can read of his accomplishments and his many books on http://www.personal.psu.edu/njl2/ , including authorship of the book The Literature of Courtly Love.

You grossly misrepresent why the author writes as he does and use that to avoid coming to terms with what he does say.

You insulted Joseph Campbell, trying to minimize his points by claiming that he "greatly oversimplifies", …

But he does. I greatly respect much of Campbell’s writings, but consider almost all his monomyth theory to be nonsense. See the criticisms of the theory at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth . See also
http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/notebooks/joseph-campbell.html ,
http://storyfanatic.com/articles/sto...-heros-journey ,
http://autotelic.com/the_hack_of_a_thousand_faces ,
http://www.andrewrilstone.com/search...eph%20Campbell (click on “Show older posts” twice and start at the bottom to read these articles in numerical order beginning with article 1), and
http://filmcrithulk.wordpress.com/20...-journey-****/ (I admit the constant use of uppercase is annoying).

You insult Norris J. Lacy and then blame me for insulting Joseph Campbell. *Sigh*

… and you ignored the quotes from The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition (1936) by C.S. Lewis, Tolkien's friend and peer, and since the question is whether Tolkien's work exhibited courtly love, then what Lewis referred to in his book is far more cogent to the discussion than a professor who can't make a single straightforward statement.

That Lewis was a friend of Tolkien ought not to make a comment by him in a book more or less credible. The comment should stand on it own. But I am aware of hundreds of medieval romance which includes a marriage of hero and heroine. Apparently medievals liked to ignore questions of property in their escapist literature. Lewis’ comment does not connect with many medieval romances which I have read, including Chrétien’s Yvain, Chrétien’s Erec et Enide, Yder, Li chevaliers as deus espées (The knight of the two swords), Li Bel Inconnu (The Fair Unknown), Fergus, Huon de Bordeaux, and others in which the hero marries a lady-love who is sufficiently beautiful, and wealthy, and well-born to satisfy.

Lewis’ comment had nothing to do with Tolkien’s fantasy writing and appears to me to be very cynical even when considering general medieval society in which divorce was not even allowed.

A medieval scholar “who can’t make a single straightforward statement″ would have not reached the level of eminence and number of publications that Lacy has. Lacy is naturally choosing to not make straightforward statements when discussing something which is controversial. You would apparently prefer that he be dishonest by making straightforward statements. But that would not fit with what he is here writing about. Anyone who wishes can read of his accomplishments and his many books on http://www.personal.psu.edu/njl2/ , including authorship of the book The Literature of Courtly Love.

You grossly misrepresent why the author writes as he does and use that to avoid coming to terms with what he does say.

I offered the most popular of their time. The most popular.

I already mentioned that Malory was not one of the most popular authors of the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries. Jakemon Sakesep’s Châtelain de Coucilet may have been very popular, but most popular? Do you have a credible source for this claim?

I also mentioned The Canterbury Tales and The Decameron, both immensely popular and highly influential to this day. In addition, I referred to Yvain, the Knight and the Lion and Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart. If you'd like more, then read Marie de France, who wrote Bisclavret (which I also mentioned) and Equitan, both dealing with adultery; in fact, over half the lais Marie de France wrote concerned illicit or adulterous lovers. See also Chevrefoil (a Tristanian poem), and Yonec (a tale of a woman in a loveless marriage who has a child through an adulterous affair).

I have read every work you mention more than once, save for Jakemon Sakesep’s Châtelain de Coucilet. You here admit that almost half of the writings of Marie de Fance are not “concerned [with] illicit or adulterous lovers.” As already mentioned by me, Chrétien’s Yvain does not “deal with adulterous or illicit love” at all. For that alone, by most modern definitions of courtly love, it is not a romance of courtly love. Canterbury Tales also contains stories that have no adultery and even those that do are not all courtly, as one would expect of a collection of tales reflecting the many different likes and styles of stories told in Chaucer’s day. The Decameron mostly derives from so-called bourgeois romance and one would expect such a work to be full of tales of cleverness and sexual pranks.

I am also not going to dig up the hundreds of lais and poems written by every trouvere, troubadour or minnesinger who spoke of courtly love.

No-one asked you to. But you might at least admit that if you dug up every work that did not mention courtly love, that list would be longer

I also remain contextual, which is why I keep referring to the 14th century in regards to courtly love, because from a historical standpoint that is when it was wound inextricably with the courts of England and France, discussed and debated most regularly, and used in a real-life sense like a religion of love, often to disastrous effect.

In short you are not talking about medieval literature at general, but only about medieval literature eminating from France and Provence and only some of this literatue in a particular period. Cherry-picking.

I didn't refer to those because they have nothing to do with the literary conventions of courtly love. I also didn't mention fabliaux like Reynard the Fox, and neither did I mention Von Eisenbach's Parzifal. I never stated anywhere that every story written from 1100 to 1500 AD concerned courtly love. Neither did I refer back to the chansons de geste that are not of the courtly love tradition. You keep wanting to muddy the waters with superfluity.

In short you admit that works which arguably concern courtly love are only a portion of medieval literary production but you choose to write about them only and then blame Tolkien for not basing his work of them. You even use the word bowdlerize. It is your attempt to not include these works that seems to be to be closer to bowdlerization, but perhaps better called by some term which might mean the opposite. Would domneiation work?

I didn't mention 1960s films like Mrs. Robinson either. Because that would be out of context. Context. Use it. But in another discussion, please. I see no point in continuing this one.

No. No point.

You admit that Tolkien did not draw from courtly love stories and then suggest that in not doing so that Tolkien was bowdlerizing. Then you fall over backward to claim that any attempt to point out that medieval literature contains loads of literature that was not greatly influenced by courtly love is muddying the water. I say it is clarifying the water.