This work is part of the history of ideas, feelings, and mentalities of the 15th and 16th centuries in Germany. The corpus, which connects Mélusine (1456) by Thüring von Ringoltingen and Maguelonne (1527) by Veit Warbeck with Galmy (1535) and Gabriotto (1555) by Jörg Wickram, as well as the translation of Ethiopics (1556) by Jean Zschorn, allows for the tracking, through the analysis of these five representative novels, of the evolution of the concept of love during this significant period marking the transition from the Italian Renaissance to the Reformation.

Each novel is approached according to three parameters. First, a historical and positivist approach replaces the notion of natural love transmitted from romantic literature with the customs of the time. The interpretation of the second parameter, romantic feeling, considers the literary and philosophical dimensions of the novels, whether it is Neoplatonism, Protestantism, or Neostoicism, as well as their own aesthetic through the study of the language of love and narrative strategies.

Finally, marriage, which represents the third element, is situated within a legal framework where a diachronic analysis seeks to follow the institutionalization of love. The use of a methodology that favors the flexibility of literary theories is one way of approaching the problematic and aesthetic complexity of the theme.