romance

, by Frank Dicksee, considered to be the archetypal romantic couple, depicting the play's iconic balcony scene Romance and romantic love encompass a number of ideas about love, which are interrelated for historical and cultural reasons: * passionate feelings of attraction—a mental state of "being in love", with focused attention (salience) towards a specific individual for courtship or pair bonding; * the cultural practice or idealization of initiating intimate relationships for feelings like these, over more practical or ordinary concerns; * a relationship or love affair initiated or maintained this way, which may be premarital or absent a commitment; and * a love story involving these elements. In psychology, romantic love is considered to be a motivation or drive, which is distinct from (but related to) the concept of attachment. The terms romance and romantic love are used with multiple definitions, which can be contradictory at times.…

, by Frank Dicksee, considered to be the archetypal romantic couple, depicting the play's iconic balcony scene Romance and romantic love encompass a number of ideas about love, which are interrelated for historical and cultural reasons: passionate feelings of attraction—a mental state of "being in love", with focused attention (salience) towards a specific individual for courtship or pair bonding; the cultural practice or idealization of initiating intimate relationships for feelings like these, over more practical or ordinary concerns; a relationship or love affair initiated or maintained this way, which may be premarital or absent a commitment; and a love story involving these elements. In psychology, romantic love is considered to be a motivation or drive, which is distinct from (but related to) the concept of attachment. The terms romance and romantic love are used with multiple definitions, which can be contradictory at times. The philosopher Arthur Lovejoy once wrote that "The word 'romantic' has come to mean so many things that, by itself, it means nothing." Collins Dictionary defines romantic love as "an intensity and idealization of a love relationship, in which the other is imbued with extraordinary virtue, beauty, etc., so that the relationship overrides all other considerations, including material ones." The concept of romantic love also came to represent the idea of individualistic choice in marriage and sexual partners, although it's rarely realized fully and can be a source of both gratification and disappointment in relationships. People who experience little to no romantic attraction are referred to as "aromantic". pictured to the southeast, in 1030 Initially, courtly love emerged in Provence (Southern France) as a type of literature (poetry) created by poets known as the troubadours. In this earlier southern form, courtly love was often unrequited. Adultery was only introduced as a theme when the phenomenon moved northward to Aquitaine and England. A regular feature was the conflict between early humanistic ideals (where pleasure and desire can be a source of goodness) and the religious precepts of the time. Medieval Christian doctrine generally condemned sexuality as a source of pleasure. All was seen as subordinate to spiritual love (God's agape, and one's love of God in return); willfulness was even more sinful than fornication. In the Western tradition (drawing from Plato and Aristotle), Christian religious love was defined in terms of a union with God. According to a strand of Christian mysticism, one actually merges with God in a manner reminiscent of Aristophanes' myth, although this was criticized by the orthodoxy who maintained that man can only be wedded with God while each remains distinct. The concept of "fin'amors" ("pure love" or "true love") was then invented by the troubadours, combining elements of Christian mysticism with Neoplatonism from the Middle-East. According to Singer, the troubadours would not have thought of themselves as socially subversive. Rather, fin'amors (in its initial southern form) contextualized love in the hierarchical medieval world as subservience to a lady, who was even sometimes a legal sovereign. However, in its failure to subordinate itself to God, fin'amors encouraged self-sufficiency—seeking from human beings what according to Christianity only God provides. shown in pink The original Provençal troubadours made no attempt to codify their views, and mainly wrote poetry. As the phenomenon spread northward, however, a new variation developed. Courtly love was introduced to the north of France by Eleanor of Aquitaine, when she married to become queen of France. In Paris, her ideas about love were introduced with opposition from her husband, King Louis; however, when she later remarried to become queen of England, King Henry in London was more sympathetic to her influence. Eleanor was sent back to France for a period when King Henry appointed their son Richard (who was only 11) to be Duke of Aquitaine. It was during this time that Eleanor presided over the so-called "court of love" at Poitiers, where nobles are said to have met and posed questions about love. Another French royal who was influential to the development of courtly love was Eleanor's daughter, Countess Marie, who was present at Poitiers, and then later at her own capital of Troyes. Chrétien de Troyes was apparently encouraged to adopt the theme of adultery in works such as Lancelot by Marie, despite actually finding the subject distasteful himself. Marie is also believed to have directed Andreas Capellanus to write The Art of Courtly Love ( ), a book which specified a set of 31 "rules of love", including the following: Scholars have debated to what extent Capellanus intended to seriously advocate the practice of courtly love—despite likely intending to portray the conditions at Queen Eleanor's court—because in the final part of the book, Capellanus condemns courtly love as offensive to God and inimical to religious love. The book is addressed to "Walter", a young man to whom Capellanus eventually reveals that he is only teaching courtly love to so Walter can be on his guard against it. Some possible explanations are that the book was intended to be satire, or that the book is an instance of "double truth", in which natural reason and faith are each a means to different truths which may be contradictory. The book might also be read as an attempt at harmonization, by first examining the implications of courtly love in full, but then subordinating it to religious love. Regardless, the book was later condemned by the Bishop of Paris, and banned, in 1277. According to Frank Tallis, "At Poitiers it was decided that love—if true—must be disturbed and slightly perverse; it must be obsessive, compulsive, agitated, anxious, jealous, suspicious, clandestine, and frustrating." The book has also been interpreted as an early conception of limerence by Dorothy Tennov, who says that Capellanus describes the state "very accurately", although jealousy is not essential to limerence for Tennov. John Alan Lee considered courtly love to be the mania love style. The Albigensian Crusade terminated the activity of the troubadours in Provence, although their poems lived on and spread as a cultural influence. ==Notes== ==External links==

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