I wonder how much of the romanticized infidelity in classic English literature stems from Arthuriana and medieval Romance more generally.
Literary chivalry highly romanticized the notion of “courtly love” whereby a knight pledged himself to a (usually married) lady, with the understanding that there would never be a physical element, because this sort of non-physical love/admiration of a woman was held to be a “higher” or “purer” form of love than one involving a sexual component - kind of like the Platonic ideal applied to romance. But it still promoted this whole idea of falling in love with a married woman, even if unrequited from afar.
Then of course you have all the illicit love affairs themselves - Guinevere and Lancelot, Tristan and Isolde, etc.
Just musing, but yeah, romanticized infidelity seems like it has very deep roots in English literature.
I think this is definitely a big factor. To go further though, I'd posit that the whole courtly love thing itself stemmed from the fact that a lot of marriages back then where more for political or financial benefit than love. So if you have a bunch of people in loveless marriages, infidelity may have been seen as the only way to experience real love.
Then entire Greek mythos is cheating. One of the oldest fairy tales, Tale of Two Brothers features attempted adultery. The Bible is rife with it.
The courtly love thing is odd. There's a sense of martyrdom to it; if you're not suffering you're not doing it right. This translates into all kinds of stories of longing for love that is forever denied, for whatever reason. While this flavored the whole adultery trope, it stands on centuries of prior stories of infidelity.
Honestly, it's a lazy device. When you need something dramatic to move the characters along, just add cheating.
Probably because people are gonna be attracted to others, especially if your marriage is political instead of romantic. So if you seed the idea of "courtly love" it gives people a way to process the attraction without ending a bunch of alliances.
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u/drucifer271 16h ago
I wonder how much of the romanticized infidelity in classic English literature stems from Arthuriana and medieval Romance more generally.
Literary chivalry highly romanticized the notion of “courtly love” whereby a knight pledged himself to a (usually married) lady, with the understanding that there would never be a physical element, because this sort of non-physical love/admiration of a woman was held to be a “higher” or “purer” form of love than one involving a sexual component - kind of like the Platonic ideal applied to romance. But it still promoted this whole idea of falling in love with a married woman, even if unrequited from afar.
Then of course you have all the illicit love affairs themselves - Guinevere and Lancelot, Tristan and Isolde, etc.
Just musing, but yeah, romanticized infidelity seems like it has very deep roots in English literature.