re: #390 SanFranciscoZionist

That sort of idealized courtly love thing…it’s a whole weird world unto itself. I mean, Petrach’s entire notion that Laura knew he was alive was based on her ‘accidentally’ dropping a glove in his presence. (Or, possibly, her simply accidentally dropping a glove close enough to him that he could jump on it like a slavering hyena.) Meanwhile, he was having a family with a woman who he never bothered to write a sonnet for.

Earlier, more traditional courtly love is different ball of wax. My favorite detail from Capellanus is that Marie of Champagne ruled that a married couple could not be courtly lovers.

This sort of thing changes so much over time.

If the Renaissance had not been filled with precocious lovers, there would have been no one for the Enlightenment. They had the plague years to get through.