Beauty and Her Plunging Breast

The Troubadour ... saw himself as moving to an ever greater freedom. The less he asserted his own will, the more he accepted that of his lady, which was seen as a rule emanating from pure Beauty. Thus his union with a higher level of life (a higher level than his own self) was assured; he leaped into a new dimension where the dichotomy of law and freedom, rule and will, was overcome.

But in fact this position, which hypostasised the lady and destroyed her individuality, was all the while contraverted by the conviction of equality in love, by the acceptance of her as a real person who was also struggling forward.

-- Jack Lindsay, The Troubadours and their world