The Art of Courtly Love

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. 

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).