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.