Courtly love may therefore be regarded as the complex product of numerous factorsâsocial, erotic, religious, and philosophical. The idea spread swiftly across Europe, and a decisive influence in that transmission was Eleanor of Aquitaine, wife first to Louis VII of France and then to Henry II of England, who inspired some of the best poetry of Bernard de Ventadour, among the last (12th century) and finest of troubadour poets. Her daughter Marie of Champagne encouraged the composition of ChrĂ©tien de Troyes's Lancelot (Le Chevalier de la charrette), a courtly romance whose hero obeys every imperious (and unreasonable) demand of the heroine. Soon afterward the doctrine was "codified" in a three-book treatise by AndrĂ© le Chapelain. In the 13th century a long allegorical poem, the Roman de la rose, expressed the concept of a lover suspended between happiness and despair. The 13th century also produced one of the few medieval uses of the term courtly love, in the Occitan (Provençal) romance Flamenca, which refers to amor cortes. (Fin'amor, in Occitan, and amour fine, in French, are closely related terms also used in medieval texts.)
This... this is a HISTORY BOOK! What are you tryna pull here?!
