There are some fairly interesting examples of medieval writing one can take a gander at.
Wolfram von Eschenbach's "Parzifal" is kind of an epitome of 13th c. courtly culture and ideals, otherwise dealing with the Holy Grail and what constitutes a "perfect knight", i.e. Parzifal/Perlesvaus/Percival. (Though Eschenbach's claim of being an analphabet only proud of his ability to beat people up and disparaging his own verse making is most likely a joke.)
Chrêtien de Troyes "Li Conte de Graal" is French, earlier (original?), but similarly themed as Eschenbach's.
Jean de Joinville's autobiography, which has the title "The Life of St Louis" (well, the saint was king of France and Jean's cousin so that explains the title) gives a lot of set-piece anecdotes about French upper-crust sentiments, while actually being bloody entertaining. (Like Joinville commenting on the chivalric qualities of a battle being fought only with "noble" weapons like lances and swords.)
Courtly love is otoh the specific domain of the Occitan trobadour poetry. With additional themes like Betran de Born praising warfare as a noble endeavor, or Peir Vidal boasting of his martial abilities, the political poetry (Peir Cardenal demanding the duke of Toulouse take up arms and drive the two enemies out, the French and the Muslims, in "Far Sirventes"), and the downright smutty stuff (Bertrand de Ventadorn in order to propel a ship filled with virgins becalmed on the sea promising not just to fart the sails into life, but also to
[edit: OK: "defecate" then? Oh the Horrors of the Body that so plague in particular the Americans!
] into them if necessary).
Not that the Occitans would necessarily have had much truck with the "chevalerie" of the northern barbarians, instead flaunting their own (strangely similar in someways, less so in others perhaps) concept of "paratge".
Secondary literature, while old by now, I still find Georges Duby entertaining. Maybe try his "William Marshall The Best Knight in the World"?
Reading up on the religious knightly orders as a special case of chivalric culture would also seem reasonable to me.
