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The idea of courtly love, as we understand it, began during the Romantic revival of the nineteenth century, when there was "a period of general mythologizing about the Middle Ages" (Jordan 134). According to the Romantics, courtly love describes an ideal of adulterous love between medieval aristocratic men and women, and relationships of this nature being more genuine than the common arranged marriage. Scholars believed this idea of love was characteristic of aristocratic culture in the Middle Ages because a great many texts of the period expressed a longing for fin'amors. Fin'amors, according to William Chester Jordan, is "the closest medieval term to courtly love" and "means something like ‘unblemished love' – love which, because it cannot or should not be fulfilled, achieves a certain purity and poignancy" (Jordan 134).
The doctrine of courtly love was designed to teach courtiers how to be lovely, charming and delightful. Its basic premise was that being in love would......

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Approximate Pages: 4 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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