The idea of 'courtly love' has dominated research into medieval attitudes to sexual relationships for so long that the seriousness and consistency with which medieval authors addressed marriage has not been adequately recognised. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries were a momentous period for developments in theological and legal thinking about marriage, and writers of imaginative literature in this period also expressed these principles.

Neil Cartlidge analyses a number of continental texts which are central to any study of medieval marriage - the De amore of Andreas Capellanus, Erec et Enide, and the letters of Abelard and Heloise - but it is the concern with marriage in the medieval literature of England in particular that forms the substance of this book.

He extends his study to a number of English texts, including the The Life of Christina of Markyate, the Chanson de Saint Alexis which she probably once owned; the Lives of Margaret, Katherine and Juliana and The Owl and the Nightingale, showing their shared ideas about the nature of marriage and the rigour with which those ideas are pursued.