Idea of love in the 16th Century

Love is the highest value which makes us fundamentally human. In Christianity, Love has been considered a unique virtue. Universal love is the essential concept solemnized by almost every religion in the world. Human society has been always highly prescriptive about the idea of love in conjugal relationship. Society has scripted a notion of romantic ecstasy in this regard from the dawn of history. In ancient Greece, they used three loosely synonymous words to define love, ‘Eros’ which means sexual love, ‘Philia’ which means friendship, and ‘Agape’ which means compassion. In Plato’s Symposium (210-212), particularly the speech of Socrates recounts the doctrine about Eros, that he modestly says, has been imparted to them by the wise woman Diotima. She bids us not to linger in the love evoked by the beauty in a single human body, but to mount up as by stair,” from one going on to two and from two  to all fair forms,’ then up from the beauty of the body to the beauty of the mind, until we arrive at a final contemplation of the idea, or form of “beauty absolute, separate, simple and everlasting,” From this beauty in its own world of  Ideas, the human soul is  in exile and of it the beauties of the body and the world perceiving by the senses are only distant, distorted, and impermanent reflections. Before the advent of the Renaissance, the concept of courtly love developed. The term was coined by Gaston Paris. Courtly love was a formal practice during medieval France that later transmitted in entire  Europe. The knights of the middle ages had a code of conduct, namely chivalric code for wooing the woman who is married to a nobleman or a king. The rules of courtly love included protecting and respecting the lady and performing valorous deeds in the name of the lady. The affair was supposed to be clandestine. The knight expressed his admiration and adoration for his love interest, but their love often remained unconsummated.

 Carnal love is a term often used derogatorily to mean sexual love performed to satisfy a person’s physical needs devoid of any emotional attachment. The sole purpose of carnal love was believed to be the gratification of physical urges typical to human instinct. Sexual and sensual relations were considered emblems of animalistic tendencies of human being generated out of the primitive instinct that lurks in the darkest recesses of human mind. Such choices of relation divulge the lower self of a man that makes him akin to the beasts. In the Bible, there is a reference that a man who pursuits for such love will not be able to see the light of heavenly kingdom.

The idea of love gradually transformed during the late 17^th century and emerged as an amalgamation of platonic and carnal love. The petrarchan tradition taught to eulogise the beauty of the lady love often tending, rather diverting it to the point of cajolery. The Elizabethan sonneteers used Carpe diem theme in their poem often persuading the lady love to make the most of youth and beauty. Though William Shakespeare, in his sonnet 129, abhors the idea of carnal love, the metaphysical poets like John Donne treated the idea solemnly. Even though there were prominent references of physical love, Donne subtly delivered it under the translucent cover of religious connotations, (The Canonization, where the poet canonizes their love).Andrew Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress overtly referred to sexual love, but he also explored the realm of human morality in order to justify or even to rationalize his argument.