Explain the connection between the courtly love literature and Christianity, using Chrétien de Troyes’s Lancelot as the main example
Please provide the best answer for the statement.
1) One of the most popular works of the day, Chrétien de Troyes’s Lancelot, centered on the adventures of Lancelot, a knight in the court of the legendary King Arthur of Britain, and focusing particularly on his courtly love-inspired relationship with Guinevere, Arthur’s wife.
2) In the story’s climax, Lancelot meets Guinevere secretly at night and kneels before her, “holding her more dear than the relic of any saint,” in a scene in which the “religion of love”—so marvelous in its physical joy that the narrator cannot tell of it, “for in a story it has no place”—is confounded with spiritual ecstasy. This feature is indebted to Islamic notions of physical love as a metaphor for the love of God, as found in Sufi poetry and in the love songs popular in the Islamic Spanish courts
3) The love of woman celebrated in medieval romance and troubadour poetry was equated in the Christian mind with love for the Virgin Mary. Songs were sung to her, cathedrals built in her honor (all cathedrals named Notre-Dame, “Our Lady,” are dedicated to her), and a Cult of the Virgin developed around her.
4) Lancelot was written at the request of Eleanor of Aquitaine’s daughter, Marie—herself named after the Virgin. Chrétien presents himself as the servant of Marie and devotes his writer’s skill to doing her bidding, just as the knight Lancelot serves Queen Guinevere with his knightly skill and as the Christian serves the Virgin Mary.
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