ern times, books were scarce and few people could read, even among the upper classes. Written literature, like movies or TV today, was mainly intended as a group experience, read or sung aloud to an audience. We might logically, then, expect it to combine "male oriented" and "female oriented" themes and plot elements. And indeed, it did back to about the twelvth century, the age of Chretien de Troyes. Before that time, the Western literature tradition was predominantly "male oriented." Consider for example the two Greek epics, the Illiad and the Odyssey. The background of both is the Trojan War, fought over Helen of Troy, a properly "romantic" subject in our modern sense. But the Illiad is not about Helen of Troy, it is essentially about a quarrel between two men, Achilles and Agamemnon. The Odyssey is about a man trying to get home to his wife; their mutual love is plainly deep and strong, but not passionate or romantic in the popular modern sense.
The idea of grown men and women, married or unmarried
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