55 pages • 1 hour read
Andreas CapellanusThe Art of Courtly Love
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1186A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Book 1, Chapter 6, First-Third DialogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Book 1: “Introduction to the Treatise of Love”
Book 1, Chapter 6 Summary: “In What Manner Love May Be Acquired and In How Many Ways”
Throughout Chapter 6, Andreas discusses how to acquire love. He notes that “some people” teach five ways to acquire love, through “a beautiful figure, excellence of character, extreme readiness of speech, great wealth, and the readiness with which one grants that which is sought” (33). However, Andreas himself believes the last two “ought to be banished completely from Love’s court” (33). Beauty acquires love easily, but such love tends not to last. Andreas encourages Walter not to be swayed by “empty beauty” but to focus on “good character” (35). It is this “alone which blesses a man with true nobility and makes him flourish in ruddy beauty” (35). While character alone deserves love, “fluency of speech” (35) can provoke love. Andreas intends to demonstrate this through a series of eight dialogues between men and women of the middle-class, simple nobility, and higher nobility.
Book 1, Chapter 6, First Dialogue Summary: “A man of the middle class speaks with a woman of the same class”
The First Dialogue explains how a middle-class man should address a middle-class woman. He should greet her “in his usual way” (36). He may wait for her to start a conversation, but if she does not, he should say something that has nothing to do with love—“make her laugh at something, or else praise her home, or her family, or herself” (37).
