Examples Of Courtly Love In The Knight's Tale

Courtly love in The Knight’s Tale Love is selfless, love is sacrificial, love is patient and kind, it does not weary. We know these things, yet we often undervalue and insufficiently understand the meaning of love. People these days often say things like, “I love kool aid!” when kool aid is not even a person and cannot be truly loved. In literature we can find that their is a love called courtly love. Courtly love is a dramatic, idealistic love that is very powerful. It is a triumphant love that can trump even marriage. Courtly love came from the French, and was popular in the High Middle Ages. It makes men spout dramatic poetry to their beloved, and gives men an “I’d rather die than not have your love returned” kind of air. This is the genre

An example of what the story portrays as the power of love is this, “The Lord of love... is stronger than dukes or kings, for he turns the hearts of men, and no voice nor arm can hinder him” (63). This is saying that nothing can stop the course of love. If the course of love has to go right through another relationship and ruin it, then it will. This quote even says there is a ‘lord of love’ who rules over the heart. Arcite and Palamon were sworn friends at one time and loved each other as brothers. Though they were in jail, they still had each other. They had some happiness, but the love blinded them and turned them against one another. These two men cannot trust each other any more. They are enemies because the love of a woman has distracted them from what is important.

Courtly love physically wrecked Arcite. This is what happened to him, “He lay awake in the night thinking of Emily, and had no sleep or rest. He grew lean and hollow-eyed, and pale and wan, and kept by himself alone…” (51). Being so in love with Emily, and never seeing her again made him become ill. He was always thinking of her, so he never slept, ate, or drank. Therefore, Arcite became sickly and thin. Later in the text it says he was unrecognizable, even his voice was so. The absence of his beloved made him depressed, and led his body to degrade. Courtly love is destructive, and it has taken Arcite’s