Courtly Love in the Canterbury Tales

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2,7, University of Bayreuth, language: English, abstract: Courtly love embraces a beautiful lady, married or unobtainable, who was the object of love for a knight. In general courtly love was secret and between man and woman of noble status and it was not practiced between husbands and wives. Such relationships did not exist in real medieval life. Marriages were mostly arranged and women were seen as property to their husbands. It was more an 'available fiction which informed the cultural climate, much as the wider conventions of chivalry did' (Rudd 2001:33). This is a relatively vague definition of the topic of courtly love and it only summarizes the most important points. This paper will work out the origins and the meaning of courtly love more intensive, watching its first origins and its appearance in the Romance of the Rose, and it will mention and describe every important characteristic. These characteristics will be a guideline to show Chaucer's treatment of the topic in his work The Canterbury Tales. Elements of courtly love appear in the Prologue, the Knight's Tale, the Merchant's Tale, and in the Franklin's Tale. These elements will be shown and explained. Finally a conclusion will summarize the most important points.