courtly love
1
9.9
- noun
- Literature
:
amor cortés
- Belief in God, courtly love, honor, and so forth: we can recognize that people once felt these things, but we can't feel them ourselves.
- courtly love language
- courtly love conventions
Examples
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A touch of the old courtly love, that's what gets to them every time.
Fiction book (1995) -
When Usamah served the Damascene atabeg, he negotiated with the Egyptians in verse, while crusader knights spun the poems of courtly love.
Academic text (2011) -
How does this understanding of love connect with the courtly love tradition.
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Marianna's relationship with Saro begins with the exchange of glances, in typical courtly love fashion.
Academic text (1995) -
Now, as part of court etiquette and as part of the language of courtly love, Henry's courtiers knew that Henry would often appear in disguise and they in turn were supposed to recognize the King no matter what he was wearing.
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In medieval literature, knights often practiced courtly love by secretly adoring noblewomen from afar.
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The hero's courtly love for the lady led him to perform daring feats to win her favor.
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Poets frequently wrote about courtly love, celebrating the pining and longing that accompanied their unfulfilled desires.
How Stylized
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound is compositionally built from 'courtly' (relating to a royal court) and 'love', so learners can infer a general sense of refined or aristocratic romantic feeling. However, the full meaning refers to a specific medieval, stylized set of conventions (chivalry, secrecy, unattainability) that is cultural and historical rather than directly deducible from the constituents, so it is only partially predictable to a B1 learner.
Etymology
Courtly love comes from royal courts long ago, where knights praised noble women with poems and brave deeds while keeping their feelings secret. Because this praise was polite, distant, and often could not lead to marriage, courtly love came to mean 'a formal, ideal, often secret kind of romance'.