Burns' "Courtly Love: Who Needs It?"

In E. Jane Burns' article "Courtly Love: Who Needs It?," (Signs: Autumn 2001) she traces the development of feminist scholarship as it engages with the institution of "courtly love" as it appears in medieval literature, especially the romance narratives. She begins by pointing out the surprising but striking parallels between the expectations of women within the framework of courtly love and the contemporary book The Rules. The Rules sets out to provide a guide for women to land a husband by instructing them on how to appear more attractive and desirable through their behavior. They are supposed to be subservient, submissive, passive, avoid conflict, and should always let the man have his way, basically. The book points out that although this may seem disempowering or even offensive to women, this strategy will actually prove quite effective, especially when paired with the simultaneous strategy of appearing aloof and disinterested. The result, then, will be that the man will find himself entranced and full of desire and ultimately, will promise to serve and protect the girl.

This appears to be the very same dynamic in courtly love as it functions in medieval fiction. Feudal Europe being an intensely patriarchal society, women were allowed little power or agency and were generally expected to submit to the men in their lives. However, in the workings of courtly love, this gendered expectation appears to be inverted. The knight pledges his loyalty to the lady and in return she provides him with an object to desire, a source of inspiration, and of course, affection. Burns points out that while the lady appears to have nominal power over her lover, it was merely meant to be read as symbolic or metaphorical.

Burns' point is that there are roughly two different kinds of courtly love that emerge when one looks at the romance texts: a traditional one in which the man is enhanced through inspiration or social standing through a love affair with a lady, and a second in which basic roles, identities, expectations, traditions, and conventions are challenged, stretched, satirized, or outright subverted.

She ultimately argues that courtly love is not an inherently oppressive institution, but rather has a long history, stemming from the Middle Ages, of actually offering the chance to sidestep heteronormativity and offer room for ambiguity and suspension of the norms. She criticizes the feminist scholarship of the 80's and 90's, and Lacanian psychoanalytic work as well in how it treats romance, for taking the emphasis off of the women in the texts. For example, many feminists were quick to point out that Eve Sedgwick's "Between Men" theory of male homosocial bonding easily applies to the love affairs of the medieval romances, in which men egage in heterosexual marriages and love affairs merely to negotiate connections with other men and improve their own social standing. Thus, what this amounts to for Burns is a look at what is going on between men, ignoring any possible agency or power that women could find within that triangulation. Similarly, psychoanalysis "removes" the woman from the equation as well by rendering her an absent, "lacking other," who simply provides the excuse and the superficial inspiration to compose love poetry and songs.

What I found most interesting about this article is how I can now read medieval romances looking at the behavior of women within their sociopolitical circumstances to see how they both conform to the expectations feudal society places on them AND how simultaneously, they find the space to resist and trouble those same conventions.

I also want to take a look at David Lorenzo Boyd's "Sodomy, Misogyny, and Displacements: Occluding Queer Desire in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," which was cited by Burns.