Courtly love is a notion invented in 1883 by the philologist Gaston Paris to describe the feelings between Lancelot and Queen Guinevere in the author Chrétien de Troyes. It can be defined as an extramarital affair between a married lady and a lover who goes above and beyond to obtain the favors of his beloved. It is a type of love very present in medieval literature of the twelfth th and XIII e centuries, from Occitan lyric poems to Arthurian novels.
Can this adulation be interpreted as revealing a golden age in the status of women? Is this an opportunity for the latter to express her sexuality outside of marriage? Would the man in love in the service of his lady reverse the hierarchy between the sexes? Probably not, because courtly love only affects a tiny part of the population:the aristocratic elite. In this literature, the highly codified masculine rules of the feudal world remain dominant, and it is the feelings and prowess of the man that are expressed. It is he who speaks, desires, is the real subject of the loving exchange. The lady portrayed is a literary figure, a disembodied and inaccessible ideal, far from feminine reality.