Q and CH: Courtly Love to D/S

Just to say up front: the topic of this thread deals with issues likely to take it into NSFW territory.









That said, my question: to what extent do you agree with the idea that courtly love was similar to and/or could be seen as a precursor (spiritual or otherwise) to the dominance and submission subculture. Based on these connections, how, with a PoD during or after the crusades can this custom become a medieval or renaissance version of the practice as we'd recognize it today? Bonus points if you can incorporate as many BDSM elements as possible.
 
That said, my question: to what extent do you agree with the idea that courtly love was similar to and/or could be seen as a precursor (spiritual or otherwise) to the dominance and submission subculture.

The sub-culture? You can't. Sub-cultures as we think of them are features of industrially modern societies, they're horizontal affiliation networks without a hope of salvation[1] or a productive economic interest.

I'm sure you can produce an interesting reading on parallelism in themes of appropriate reverence, but I suspect that courtly love writings exceed the terrain of modern D/s themes—not every writing describes an idealised courtly love. We do know that actual sexual practices related very vaguely at best to idealised courtly love.

Based on these connections, how, with a PoD during or after the crusades can this custom become a medieval or renaissance version of the practice as we'd recognize it today? Bonus points if you can incorporate as many BDSM elements as possible.

I'm going to suggest straight away that connected, distant, horizontal communities of practicioners acting as an underground within a dominant culture; with a side line of high end wage labour working the same set of behaviours isn't going to happen.

Much like with other histories of sexualities, as soon as you fall back past industrial modernity the bases of sexual practices change dramatically as do the forms in which "comparable" sexual practices present socially. Mollies aren't Gay. A culture of hyper-stylised court display in love isn't D/s.

But the question is, how far could a hyper-stylised sexual display be pushed? At the end of early-modernity Louis XIV pushed stylised courtly behaviour to its limits in Europe. Admittedly this occurred because his house stopped the _military_ control of nobles, and replaced it with a softer kind of power. But I think this is far too late to be a comparable example for a medieval or renaissance court. I think it does let us know that a replacement of military power for soft power is important in terms of using a system of courtly display to control nobles, and thus making adherence to a system of courtly display central to conduct. Centralism, crown power, and a lack of immediate internal chaos.

And it kind of needs to happen in France or England for the idea of courtly love to dominate court life with a strict set of rules of public love-making.

yours,
Sam R.

[1] Substitute for whatever pre-modern religious configuration represented classed domination.
 
Much like with other histories of sexualities, as soon as you fall back past industrial modernity the bases of sexual practices change dramatically as do the forms in which "comparable" sexual practices present socially. Mollies aren't Gay. A culture of hyper-stylised court display in love isn't D/s.

The bases change dramatically?

Could you explain what you mean by that?

If you mean to say that modern sexual practices as described in factual terms are not present in the past, that's a howlingly unfounded academic conceit. Of course they are. The fluff and babble around them however, is significantly different, and they are highly context dependent.

So for that reason I'm not seeing D/S appearing in exactly the same form as today in the middle ages. Certainly "slave" wouldn't have the dirty connotations that it has now as lots and lots of people were in servile positions, while "dog" would be pretty unspeakably vile as an image and probably not sexual.
 
The bases change dramatically?

Could you explain what you mean by that?

Most systems of sexual meaning are dependent on the economic organisation of "the family" as that low level economic instrument of production and reproduction. The meaning of gentlemen dressing as ladies in the 18th century is somewhat different to the meaning of men dressing as women in the 21st century; the very meaning of what it is to be a man or a woman in one and another setting is different. If the basis of masculinity in, for example, Australia in the 1950s involved full-time work, mate ship, and the attempt to produce an idealised family structured around a wife conducting domestic reproduction in a commodity market; this is a very different basis of masculinity to a frame weaver in 1780 whose entire family works an 18 hour day in the house at their own pace and leisure. The system of meaning is also a system of material culture.

If you mean to say that modern sexual practices as described in factual terms are not present in the past, that's a howlingly unfounded academic conceit.

Show me full body latex suits in the 12th century and I'll accept your criticism. Some of the practices of sexuality are the enculturation of material practices, including here affective practices as a "materialised" or concretised practice. Now human spontaneity might discover ways of doing what to whom; but whether these newly discovered material practices become culturally supported, widely spread, recommended or condemned is another matter.

The long debate in the history of sexualities over the role of male-male anal penetration in sex between men is illustrative. Isolated cultures of sexual conduct between men in the 19th century have preferenced frottage or oral sex. It isn't just the bells and whistles, or the names and handshakes, the who does what to whom in the where is highly context dependent. The acts themselves have meanings written into them.

That's what I mean by different bases. Of use for our speculation: given the construction of the courtly family as having an heir and several spares; the spares restricted from reproduction through late marriage, lack of land or church service; the desire for people to express their sexuality could be removed from the private sphere of "monks and nuns engaged in evil private acts" to a public conception of necessary display of devotion or affection on a courtly model as a mandatory act for non-married elite males.

Of course they are. The fluff and babble around them however, is significantly different, and they are highly context dependent.

I think I've covered this. What two or more people discover in bed by themselves isn't historicisable. What two or more people discover, and then produce a culture imbuing it with a specific meaning, that's historicisable. It is the meaning of acts that is the history of sexuality.

So for that reason I'm not seeing D/S appearing in exactly the same form as today in the middle ages. Certainly "slave" wouldn't have the dirty connotations that it has now as lots and lots of people were in servile positions, while "dog" would be pretty unspeakably vile as an image and probably not sexual.

Given widespread servitude as common, and the need of the medieval elite to jealously preserve public station (sumptuary laws, for example), I'd suggest that slave might be even more shocking if applied in the context of courtly love?

yours,
Sam R.
 
Show me full body latex suits in the 12th century and I'll accept your criticism. Some of the practices of sexuality are the enculturation of material practices, including here affective practices as a "materialised" or concretised practice. Now human spontaneity might discover ways of doing what to whom; but whether these newly discovered material practices become culturally supported, widely spread, recommended or condemned is another matter.

Ehh, I hope it went without saying that technology-dependent fetishes aren't being discussed here. The rest of it is jargon, man. Below is my take on it.

:D

The long debate in the history of sexualities over the role of male-male anal penetration in sex between men is illustrative. Isolated cultures of sexual conduct between men in the 19th century have preferenced frottage or oral sex. It isn't just the bells and whistles, or the names and handshakes, the who does what to whom in the where is highly context dependent. The acts themselves have meanings written into them.

On the other hand contemporary criminal protocols (especially in France and Russia as those are the ones I've seen) put the lie to the claim of frottage being the preferred means. Nor do modern sexual act rates match popular perception of which are most common. In particular anal sex is much rarer in real life than in porn or fiction, because of logistics or whatever.

I think I've covered this. What two or more people discover in bed by themselves isn't historicisable. What two or more people discover, and then produce a culture imbuing it with a specific meaning, that's historicisable. It is the meaning of acts that is the history of sexuality.

Meh, all I'm seeing is a bunch of stuff in historical literature that doesn't fit any given conception at any given time, to the point where the amount of exceptions outnumbers the amount of perfect fits. Now granted this isn't the middle ages where it's more regular, but the Classical world is very much so. Conceptions are historicisable but they must never be confused with actual sexualities.

Given widespread servitude as common, and the need of the medieval elite to jealously preserve public station (sumptuary laws, for example), I'd suggest that slave might be even more shocking if applied in the context of courtly love?

Islamic poetry doesn't blush one bit about the usage and troubadour poetry owes a lot of its conventions to that. So I don't think it would be a big deal. That's my speculation on the matter, at least.
 
Ehh, I hope it went without saying that technology-dependent fetishes aren't being discussed here. The rest of it is jargon, man. Below is my take on it.

No worries, but in terms of a historical speculation which is dependent on a theory heavy field (history of sexualities) and on a difficult historiographical problem (interrogation of little disclosed practices) jargon is pretty damn useful.

On the other hand contemporary criminal protocols (especially in France and Russia as those are the ones I've seen) put the lie to the claim of frottage being the preferred means. Nor do modern sexual act rates match popular perception of which are most common. In particular anal sex is much rarer in real life than in porn or fiction, because of logistics or whatever.

I think this is a key issue with the historiography of sexuality. We can't take laws as indicative because legal authorities repress what they publicly fear, not necessarily what people substantively practice. Similarly we can't accept people's pornography or love-poems as indicative of their actual communities of practice, because people are fascinated with things that they don't live.

Instead we become dependent on diaries, or witness statements in trials, or public practices and rituals of sexuality that are authorised or widely observed. And this obscures the practices and rituals of the legally reviled or publicly suspected.

Meh, all I'm seeing is a bunch of stuff in historical literature that doesn't fit any given conception at any given time, to the point where the amount of exceptions outnumbers the amount of perfect fits. Now granted this isn't the middle ages where it's more regular, but the Classical world is very much so. Conceptions are historicisable but they must never be confused with actual sexualities.

Except where we can get at solid self-conceptions that aren't idealised. So we have a pretty good idea of the marriage customs of the elite due to genealogy and property records. We can't really talk about the rate of unreported bastardry, but we can get a good idea of the rate of reported (or claimed) male bastardry. So we can reassemble elements of the sexual system of heterosexual married elites.

And where we can't, the actual sexualities are obscured to the point that all we can talk about is idealised or criminalised conceptions, or rare reported divergent practices.

Islamic poetry doesn't blush one bit about the usage and troubadour poetry owes a lot of its conventions to that. So I don't think it would be a big deal. That's my speculation on the matter, at least.

Interesting!

thanks,
Sam.
 
The sub-culture? You can't. Sub-cultures as we think of them are features of industrially modern societies, they're horizontal affiliation networks without a hope of salvation[1] or a productive economic interest.

Yeah, I'm kind of regretting that word choice of "subculture" myself; maybe "practices" is the better one here?
 
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