Courtly love facts for kids
Courtly love (or fin'amor in Occitan) was a medieval European literary conception of love that emphasized nobility and chivalry. Medieval literature is filled with examples of knights setting out on adventures and performing various services for ladies because of their "courtly love". This kind of love is originally a literary fiction created for the entertainment of the nobility, but as time passed, these ideas about love changed and attracted a larger audience. In the high Middle Ages, a "game of love" developed around these ideas as a set of social practices. "Loving nobly" was considered to be an enriching and improving practice.
The idea of courtly love can be found in a lot of literature e.g. in works by Geoffrey Chaucer, Dante, Gottfried von Strassburg, Walther von der Vogelweide, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Malory and William Shakespeare.
Other pages
Images for kids
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God Speed! by Edmund Blair Leighton, 1900: a late Victorian view of a lady giving a favor to a knight about to do battle
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Courtly vignettes on an ivory mirror-case, first third of the 14th century (Musée du Louvre)
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Courtly love comes in the basket. Image of the Minnesinger Kristan von Hamle from the Manesse Codex, ca. 1305
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Warfare imagery: the Siege of the Castle of Love on an ivory mirror-back, possibly Paris, ca. 1350–1370 (Musée du Louvre)
See also
In Spanish: Amor cortés para niños
