Medieval poetry was largely about courtly love. Courtly love is a tradition represented in Western European literature that idealizes love within a knight and a lady. This love was more spiritual rather then about physical desire. Ibn Zaydun reminisces about a past love in his poem From Al-Zahra and uses a flashback method where he goes back and forth between the past and the present, when he was with his lady and “now.” “It was an unfenced field and we ran there, free like horses. But alone I now can lay claim to have kept faith. You left, left this place. In sorrow to be here again, I am loving you (Volume B, 324).” Zaydun sounds as if he’s clinging on to what is no longer there and is hurting with the flood of memories. Similarly, Arnaut Daniel, is hopelessly pining for a lady to love as he says ” I burn lights of wax and oil, so may God give me good luck with her (Volume B, 327).” He strives to be the best fit man to care for a woman and if he doesn’t receive love, he is worthless. On the other hand,Guido Guinizelli and Guido Cavalcanti, portray the total opposite views towards love. Guinizelli believes that love ruins our lives for something so complex that cannot be fully understood. He describes women as having an angelic exterior and a cold interior whereas they would take control over men like puppets. Cavalcanti sees love as something that makes you a better person. “It shifts about, changing color, drawing laughter out of tears, and the form you see out of fear, flies away from sight (Volume B, 357).” This line represents how another person can release the better person in you. Some crave love so deeply and others may avoid it perhaps its dangerous. Love is defined differently within every individual.
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Courtly love is a very entertaining idea and it makes for a great story. Writers like Ibn Zaydun took advantage of this fact and it is part of the reason that we still remember his work. It is interesting, though, to consider how different the views on the topic of courtly love are only 500 years later. Marguerite de Navarre, who wrote in the 15th and 16th century, questions the practicality and necessity of courtly love as an actual process of courtship. In The Heptameron, one of the stories tells a tale in which courtly love goes terribly wrong. At the end, the man kills himself and the woman is miserable. By the end of the story, you find yourself thinking that courtly love really is just a silly literary tradition that has no grounding in reality.