The wooing, the sharing of feelings between lovers, the promises and the courtship rituals that now seem to be such indispensable attributes of intimate relations were only invented in the late Middle Ages by the troubadours who plied the castles of southern France, and then, as the “sweet new style,” they were adopted by the affluent classes in the rest of Europe. Romance—the rituals of wooing first developed in the Romance region of southern France—provides an entire new range of challenges to lovers. For those who learn the skills necessary to meet them, it becomes not only pleasurable, but
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