Discussion Upon Courtly Love Of Medieval Western Europe

Courtly love of Medieval Western Europe was often regarded as a peculiar social and culture concept, on the one hand, because it advocated love supremacy and extramarital affair, which made it show strong unique character compared with the Western traditional love. On the other hand, it endowed love so deeper meaning and reflected the human's unceasing desire and pursuit for pure, romantic, elegant love. The emergence of courtly love was very complex, it contained both the factors of political, economic, and the influence of local cultures, foreign cultures, customs etc, therefore, we can say, courtly love was the product of the specific historical conditions, and it branded deep scars of the times.The emergence of courtly love had some historical progress, to some extent, it embodied and reflected the people's reasonable demands and aspirations. The historical progress of courtly love showed in the following aspects: First, it implied the thought against feudal aristocratic marriage , which was a great progress in the history of human emotion; Second, it contained the ideological tendency against Christian asceticism and displayed strong humanism color; Third, it created precedent in respecting and protecting women in Western, which contributed to develop a good social habits; Fourthly, it expanded some new characteristics for the love , and endued love deeper social and moral connotation. The historical progress of courtly love also good explained the reason why it was widely famous for a long time and was missed and yearned among people.Like most other things, in a historical progress at the same time, due to the influence of historical, social and other factors, courtly love also inevitably had some historical limitations, which displayed as fellows: First of all, Platonic extramarital affair was very ideal, so it could not resolve the relationship between love and marriage fundamentally; Next, it was essentially aristocratic class ideas, and it possessed the characteristics and functions to maintenance feudal order and serve for the feudal system, which made it show strong feudality; Once more, courtly love wrapped with the idea of religious abstinence as it resisted Christian asceticism, which made it not break through the barriers of Christian abstinence fundamental, and not liberate the humanity completely; Finally, although courtly love vigorously glorified and praised woman, its ultimate purpose was services for the male society, therefore, it didn't enhance the status of women radically, women still were in a position of dependence and subordination. Courtly love was replaced by a higher level of love thinking eventually because it possessed the historical limitations above mentioned.Since the 14th century, with the decline of Chivalry and the loss of cavalier principal status, courtly love also declined as the ideology and cultural values of Chivalry, however, its historical role and influence in history would not be denied.