زینب خسروی

This study undertakes a comparative analysis of the influence exerted by Eastern romantic conventions—particularly the Ozri love paradigm—on the genesis of courtly love in medieval literature. It centers on two seminal works: Nizami Ganjavi's epic romance   Leyli and Majnun and Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, with the objective of elucidating the interconnections between Eastern and Western conceptions of love while addressing extant lacunae in scholarly inquiry within this domain.

The methodological framework is foundational and qualitative in nature, incorporating historical analysis, typological >  

The findings reveal that both romantic paradigms exhibit shared attributes, including chastity and eschewal of corporeal gratifications, the idealization of the beloved as an archetype of perfection and divinity, the endurance of anguish and the tribulations of separation, and the lover's subservience and abasement before the object of affection. Nevertheless, courtly love as depicted in the selected narratives from The Canterbury Tales manifests a more terrestrial orientation, inextricably linked to chivalric ethos and societal honorifics. In contrast, Ozri love in Leyli and Majnun is predicated upon mystical and Sufi epistemological foundations. Moreover, the imprint of Eastern conventions on the evolution of courtly love in Provence is discernible through literary exchanges in Al-Andalus, the Crusades, and Arabic translational conduits.

In the view of the present investigator, this inquiry corroborates that Eastern amatory conventions not only served as a catalyst for the conceptualization of courtly love but also augmented the richness of Western literary heritage, thereby fostering a profounder comprehension of East-West literary dialectics during the medieval epoch. It is recommended that subsequent research prioritize the function of translations and pre-Islamic Persian musical modalities in the dissemination of this affective paradigm.