Courtly Love and Its Impossible Implementation: The Narrative Pragmatics of an Ideal.

Author / Editor
Chism, Christine.

Title
Courtly Love and Its Impossible Implementation: The Narrative Pragmatics of an Ideal.

Published
In Robert DeMaria Jr., Heesok Chang, and Samantha Zacher, eds. A Companion to British Literature. Vol. I, Medieval Literature 700–1450 (Chichester: Wiley, 2014), pp. 130-45.

Description
Surveys the meanings, origins, and theories of courtly love, asking how it "works" in medieval texts, what light it can "cast upon medieval cultural practices, and why it comes to matter." Includes discussion of secrecy in TC, a text that animates the "tension between feudal amorous service and literary improvisation."

Alternative Title
A Companion to British Literature.

Chaucer Subjects
Background and General Criticism
Troilus and Criseyde