Eleanor Of Aquitaine Analysis

Eleanor of Aquitaine was born into one of the wealthiest, most educated, and highly affluent families in Europe during the Mid-Middle Ages. She grew up in Southern France at the Court of Poitiers, which was made famous through Eleanor’s grandfather, William IX of Aquitaine, who is often referred to throughout history as “The Troubadour”, due to the fact that he is known as the founding troubadour. As a young teenager Eleanor inherited the court after the death of her father, making her the “owner in her own right of twice as much land as the King [of England]” (Rosenburg 4). Soon after the death of her father, Eleanor was betrothed to “Louis Florus, heir to the throne”, who soon became the King of France after the death of his father, Louis …show more content…
However, when Eleanor moved to England she was exposed to a very different literary scene as far as the types of literature that was popular and the writing style of the poets. While living in England she began to take an interest in Arthurian romances thus Eleanor became “the great patron of the two dominant poetic movements of the time: the courtly love tradition, conveyed in the songs of the troubadours, and the historical Matter of Britain, best represented in Chretien de Troyes’ roman courtois” (The Queen of the Troubadours). Arthurian romance and courtly romance had a lot in common but they were also very different in many aspects. Both types of romances focus largely on chivalric love and the notion of the woman of whom the knight or troubadour loves as being the most important person and the best thing to ever happen in the world. The lady that the knights desired in Arthurian Romance is what they based their entire world off of, and they often went to desperate measures in order to gain the lady’s affection and attention. Scholars also state that “Arthurian romance had a special, often political, significance for the highest social classes in Anglo-Angevin society”, which relates to courtly love due to the similar affects they had in society (The Evolution of Arthurian Romance). The differences between the two literary styles shows the diversity of Eleanor’s taste in literature and how cultured she