aeo Georges Duby is one of the most outstanding medieval historians in the world today. aeo This is an important book on the themes of love and marriage in the Middle Ages. aeo The hardback edition was widely reviewed and sold well.

Sources and Acknowledgments. Authors Note. Part I: Love and Marriage. 1. Marriage in early medieval society. 2. What do we know about love in twelfth-century France?. 3. The matron and the mismarried woman. 4. On courtly love. 5. Le Roman de la Rose. 6. Towards a history of women in France and Spain. Part II: Family Structures. . 7. Family structures in the West during the Middle Ages. 8. An examination of aristocratic family structures in eleventh-century France in relation to State structures. 9. Philip Augustus's France. Social changes in aristocratic circles. Part III: Culture, Values and Society. . 10. Problems and methods in cultural history. 11. The history of value systems. 12. The Renaissance of the twelfth century: audience and patronage. 13. Observations of physical pain in the Middle Ages. 14. Memories without historians. 15. Heresies and societies in pre-industrial Europe between the eleventh and eighteenth centuries. Index.

In this volume Georges Duby - one of the most outstanding historians in Europe today - addresses the theme of love and marriage in the Middle Ages. By examining the poetry and practice of courtly love and the mores of aristocratic marriages, Duby shows the Middle Ages to be male-dominated. Women were regarded as symbols, as figures of temptation who paradoxically had no desires of their own. Duby argues that the structure of sexual relationships took its cue from the family and from feudalism - both bastions of masculinity. In the second part of the book, Duby reflects on general issues in the writing of cultural history, on the history of pain and heresy, and gives a personal view of the state of historical research in France over recent generations.