C

There are so many ways to interpret the rules of courtly love. There is evidence to support both ideas; that these are the rules of legitimate love or that it is simply there to make the lustful feel better about there actions.
On one side, one could say that this was a true guide book of how people truly act when they are in love. It would be an ideal love for all people involved if people were to love for the measure of one’s character and not be overly devoted to the care of one’s body, even though attentiveness to personal health and hygiene are of importance and do not go unaddressed in this book. It is also a base for true love that if you truly love someone, that you can’t lust after other people at the same time. It is true that people who through there love around are no better than a shameless dog. Toying with other people’s emotions is never something to be handled lightly and is rightfully looked down upon in this text, further proving its legitimacy on the subject of love. It also provides a truthful insight that people generally act more kindly and of better character when they are in love, and that is an important part of true love because you can’t be in love with someone and be a jerk to them at the same time. It just wouldn’t be true love.
On the other hand, this book contradicts the ideas of true love in that the man must constantly bending over backwards to ever get the love of the one whom he is devoted to. In the first place, he contradicts himself when he says that love is attained by the meditation upon the beauty of the opposite sex, when later he says that it is the measure of someone’s character which should constitute love. Also it is ridiculous to think that the man should always be on his knees because he is afraid that he might lose the one he loves, because if it were true love, the woman would never consider lusting after another. He also goes on about how a man can never marry a woman “lower” in social status than himself, which angers me to no end because true love transcends all differences (or so I am led to believe) and money and social status should be much less important than love. It is also added that the man must go strutting around like a peacock because he does not want to seem unfit to fight to others when, once again, he had said before that it is but a measure of one’s character which should count.
Had he not made so many contradictions to the idea of true love which I hold, I would have said that it were a very good book in depiction of love. However I cannot accept the importance on which he places outward appearance and how hard the man must work to keep a fickle girls love.