Minne
In the Middle Ages, courtly love (amour courtois in French) was a highly conventionalized code that prescribed the behavior of ladies and their lovers. It also provided the theme of an extensive courtly medieval literature that began with the troubadour poetry of Aquitaine and Provence in southern France toward the end of the 11th century. The term amour courtois—translated into English as “courtly love”—came into wide use during the late 19th century through the work of the French philologist Gaston Paris, but the term itself was rarely used in medieval literature of any European language.
The phrase l'amour courtois identified a forbidden affair that was characterized by five main attributes. In essence, the relationship was:
1. Aristocratic. As its name implies, courtly love was practiced by noble lords and ladies; its proper setting was the royal palace or court.
2. Ritualistic. Couples engaged in a courtly relationship conventionally exchanged gifts and tokens of their affair. The lady was wooed according to elaborate conventions of etiquette and was the constant recipient of songs, poems, bouquets, sweet favors, and ceremonial gestures. The man must perform painstaking attention while the woman only a short hint of approval. She was the commanding mistress of the affair, the man a lowly by loyal servant.
3. Secret. Courtly lovers were pledged to strict secrecy. The foundation for their affair--indeed the source of its special aura and electricity--was that the rest of the world (except for a few confidantes or go-betweens) was excluded. They create a special secret world.
4. Adulterous. One of its principle attractions was that it offered an escape from the dull routines and boring confinements of noble marriage (which was typically little more than a political or economic alliance for the purpose of producing royal offspring). The troubadours themselves scoffed at marriage, regarding it as a glorified religious swindle. In its place they exalted their own ideal of a disciplined and decorous carnal relationship whose ultimate objective was not crude physical satisfaction, but a sublime and sensual intimacy.
5. Literary. Before it established itself as a popular real-life activity, courtly love first gained attention as a subject and theme in imaginative literature. Ardent knights, that is to say, and their passionately adored ladies were already popular figures in song and fable before they began spawning a host of real-life imitators in the palace halls and boudoirs of medieval Europe.
In courtly love, the couple was not engaging in sex. Becoming a lover meant romance, holding hands, giggling, dancing. Sex was for the duty of the marriage partner. The gap between romance/love and marriage is because so many marriages were arranged for political and economic gain. Courtly love directly relates to chivalry, the practice of being a loyal and gentlemanly like knight. How a knight should behave on the battle field and in court are explained within the codes of chivalry.
Minnesinger derives from the word Minne. Minnesingers were poet-composers who thrived in the 12C to 14C. Wolfram von Eschenbach is a minnesinger. What they sing is called minnesang and it was the tradition of lyric and song writing in Germany, which flourished in the12th century and continued into the 14th century. An individual song was a minnelied. Minne was their main subject. Minnesingers were favored in the court. They had such freedom of speech they were allowed occasionally to comment of the political situation. Their greatest achievement was creating an aura around cultivation and amenity.
References:
http://www.britannica.com/topic/courtly-love
http://condor.depaul.edu/dsimpson/tlove/courtlylove.html
http://public.wsu.edu/~delahoyd/medieval/love.html
http://www.britannica.com/art/troubadour-lyric-artist
http://study.com/academy/lesson/courtly-love-in-the-middle-ages-definition-characteristics-rules.html
