The Art of Courtly Love: Dialogues

1. What is the scenario described in your dialogue (i.e. which number is it, and who is in love with whom?) Dialogue 7 stages a courtship between a man of higher nobility and a woman of lower nobility, but the fact that they have never met makes his declaration of love immediately unstable. His desire is not based on his personal knowledge of her but on her reputation, particularly what he’s heard about her beauty and character. This makes the conversation feel less like a mutual courtship and more like an argument in which he is trying to convince her that his feelings deserve a response. He repeatedly turns desire into something that seems inevitable or even binding, as though the strength of his love creates an obligation on her part. Rather than being impressed by his rank or the intensity of his speech, she questions how he can claim such strong feelings for someone he does not actually know. Much of the dialogue becomes a negotiation over whether his status, reputation, and professed love give him any legitimate claim to her attention. 2. How do gender dynamics come into play? The gender dynamic is interesting because the dialogue gives the man the position of pursuit but gives the woman considerable power over whether that pursuit succeeds. He controls much of the conversation through elaborate courtly language, repeatedly presenting his desire as sincere, overwhelming, and deserving of recognition. Yet the woman does not simply accept the role of the admired beloved. She interrogates his reasoning, points out contradictions in his claims, and forces him to defend what he assumes love entitles him to. Her resistance is especially significant because she is also socially beneath him. He enters the conversation with advantages of both gender and rank, but neither guarantees her consent. At the same time, she can resist him primarily through speech, wit, and the defense of her honor. The dialogue, therefore does not completely overturn its gender hierarchy. Instead, it creates space in which the woman can challenge male desire and expose the assumptions behind courtly love, particularly the idea that a man’s desire creates an obligation for the woman who becomes its object. 3. How do class dynamics play out? The paragraph of instruction at the beginning informs us that the attitude a man of the higher nobility is meant to take towards a woman of the simple nobility is similar to that he would use to a woman of the middle class, except that he shouldn’t boast of his nobility very much. Evidently, some respect is still afforded, because the example man, Count G., begins with a very long ode to the woman, A. He highlights primarily her prudence and wisdom, showing a form of deference to her and acknowledgement of her noble status and therefore the specific gendered expectations placed on her, which focus more on her moral and intellectual bearing than they otherwise might. On page 93, A. suggests that “men of the higher nobility are bound to have more noble manners than other men, and they do more harm to their reputations by a little boorishness or by refraining from doing good than men of low birth and common breeding do to theirs by committing rather grave offenses.” In doing so, she uses their shared noble status as a tool of moral correction, in which the gap in their statuses is not relevant. Later, on page 100, when she reveals that she is in fact married, she cites that her husband is specifically “distinguished by his nobility, his good breeding, and his good character.” The fact that she chose to mention these three traits suggests that she thinks it should be a particularly strong rebuke to Count G. to suggest that she would not even be climbing the metaphorical social ladder by engaging in an affair with him, or perhaps it is even an implication that her husband is of a more properly moral and noble character than Count G. 4. What is the ultimate outcome for the pair? Despite his beginning in a quite effusive and flattering way, A. seems rather hesitant to return Count G.’s flirtations, and they quickly go from conducting a form of courtship to having a debate over the nature of love. When A. reveals that she is already married, the situation changes entirely and they start debating on whether love can truly exist between a married couple and what role jealousy plays in love, which eventually brings them to a point where they realize they cannot reach an agreement and have to resort to a neutral third party. Naturally, they choose the Countess of Champagne, and apparently co-write a letter to her (beginning on page 105). She settles on the side of Count G.--that love cannot truly exist between husband and wife, and that jealousy has no place in a married couple either. Indeed, as she argues, it is because there can be no true jealousy between man and wife that there can be no true love either. Presumably Count G. and the lady A.’s affair goes nowhere. optional*** Is there any specific moment you want to highlight? One moment worth highlighting is when the woman reveals that she has a husband, yet the man still does not give up his pursuit. Her marriage seems as though it should end the conversation, but he instead treats it as another obstacle that can be argued around. She also does not immediately use her husband as the reason for rejecting the man. Before mentioning her marriage, she had already resisted his advances through her own reasoning, making her refusal a decision of her own rather than one that depended on her relationship to another man. This creates gendered irony in which the woman is supposedly the person who decides whether the lover receives his “reward,” yet the structure of the conversation barely allows her refusal to end the pursuit. She has considerable rhetorical power and repeatedly challenges his reasoning, but he retains the power to keep pursuing her by turning each refusal into another argument he might still win. Her ability to say no, therefore, exists alongside a courtly system that seems reluctant to accept that no as final.