Medieval tradition of courtly love and its influence upon transforming matrimonial relations in European societies

Introduction. The article presents a study on the system of gender social roles in modern neolib-eral societies transformation, in particular, European and Russian society; and the genetic relationship of this change with the cultural tradition of courtly love. The purpose of the work is to analyse the symbolic tradition of worshipping Beautiful Lady within the courtly love which originated in Western European chivalric culture in the middle ages, and to shew how it is connected with the modern processes of radical transformation of gender social roles and gender communication system in European and Russian society. Research methods. The research is based on the following methods: a) semiotic methods of analysing cultural signs by R. Barthes and Ch. S. Peirce; b) psychoanalytic techniques of studying guilt complex, erotic worshipping and masochist syndrome by H. Marcuse and L. von Sacher-Masoch; c) cultural procedure of investigating love narrative in European culture by D. de Rougemont. The materials include cultural symbols representing the traditions of courtly love typical for Western Europe in the middle ages; literature prosaic texts of Romanticism and Realism, closely related to such representation. Results. The results consist in the revealing of the cultural and psychological succession between: a) prosaic, poetic and symbolic consequences of the courtly tradition of worshipping Beautiful Lady and b) diminishing of the significance of social institution of traditional family in modern Western and Russian society. The article examines the psychological, social and semiotic mechanisms of such continuity. It reveals the direct relationship between the masochistic psychological complex; Marcuse's concept of civilization repression; symbolic courtly male reverence for women codified in the signs of Eternal Femininity and Beautiful Lady in the middle ages; and the transgression of modern gender relations. It is emphasised that in nowadays' global society, there is a proliferation of simulative exchange of free intimacy in which the simulation of love begins to be interpreted as true intimacy. Conclusions. It is concluded that the "post-family" intimacy in the modern neoliberal society is symbolically based on a conscious deviance as well as transgression of the gender-power relations system. The basic principles of such transgression were formulated within the Western European courtly tradition of worshipping Beautiful Lady. The author notes that in the middle ages, the chivalrous revision of traditional gender-power relations in the culture of troubadours and minstrels, was limited to the scope of the symbolic and it was a cultural artifact. In the modern society, this tradition was able to change the classical social institutions of family and marriage; and because of this fact, this tradition acquired the power of social action.

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