Medieval courtship

primary sources

my biggest challenge in writing the history of the love song was grasping the revolution in romance that took place around the year 1100. We are still influenced by this huge shift in the culture. Love songs—which had been censored and prohibited for centuries—finally came out of hiding in Western societies. And in many ways, they remind us of our own popular music. It’s not going too far to say that the origins of how we sing about love today date back to this remarkable period of innovation, almost a thousand years ago.