Courtly love in Potterverse WAS: What triggered ancient magic?

[dumbledore11214]

No: HPFGUIDX 187126

Pippin:

In the traditions of courtly love (and arranged marriages), the general 
assumption is that the wife is *not* happily married. In fact the courtly lover
could never be his lady's husband. <SNIP>

Alla:

I  am not even sure how such a simple assumption that Potioncat and myself were discussing initially became so complicated. Yes, that's exactly one of my points in the tradition of courtly love, courtly lover loves the lady from afar and is NOT her husband. I mean obviously there are stories where they may have affairs, but I am talking about the stories of platonic love, where lady is his flag, his guiding star, blah, blah, blah. Where he wears lady's headscarf on his sleeve when he wins tournaments, etc.  Did you understand me to compare James' love to courtly love? If that is what happened I am sorry, I certainly was not. I was comparing Snape's love to courtly love and he was of course not the lady's husband. In fact I was not even comparing necessarily, I was wondering if author had courtly love in mind as one of the ideas, one of the foundations to develop this storyline or whether author was parodying courtly love or was doing something completely different. And no, I was not saying that Snape got his ideas from courtly stories, I was saying that author may have thought about it, so I guess I am with Magpie on that too.

I was wondering if author is alluding to it or not.


Pippin:
Because for the pureblood families, not much has changed. Their marriages are
still arranged, with the threat of being disinherited (or worse) if the
prospective spouse isn't properly pedigreed.

Alla:

Well, Magpie already addressed it and I agree with her, to me having arranged marriage means just that – parents or whatever relatives **arrange** marriage between two particular people. I do not see much indication of anything like that happening in Potterland, although I certainly agree that purebloods are expecting to marry each other. But to me it is not arranged marriage necessarily, just limiting the marriage pool.

Pippin:
I was just reacting to Alla's idea that Snape's devotion to Lily seemed to be
based on ideals of courtly love and pointing out that loving someone who was
married to someone else is in the tradition of courtly love, not a violation of
it. <SNIP>


Alla:

Well, again yes of course!  The violation of traditions of courtly love is being **selfish** about what lady wants as I perceive it, NOT loving somebody who is married to somebody else. 

The wishes of the lady are pretty much the laws in these stories of courtly love are they not?

Pippin:
It might be interesting to know whether Alla thinks it was conscious on
Snape's part, or just a literary allusion by the author.

Alla:

No, of course I do not think that it was conscious on Snape's part, lol, in a sense that I do not think that when he decided to do things in the name of Lily he was thinking that he was becoming her knight, her troubadour, but the fact that he did decide to do that,  makes him such knight whether he thought about it or not, if that makes sense.

But my initial wonder was whether it was a literary allusion by the author or not.

JMO,

Alla