ABSTRACT
Part of sixteenth century civilisation rejects love as an insane pattern of behaviour in God's eyes. This idea is given by the adjectives "fausses" and "folles", which are found particularly in titles from the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century. The heart, as the centre of feelings, appears only in the titles of two religious works, one novel, and one single essay in Italian, i.e. in a total of six books, whereas in 1961 this idea is found in fifty-one titles, only eleven of which refer to religious books. "Amour pudique" is not contrasted with other types of love in the same way as feeling is contrasted with sensual phenomena, but rather on the same plane of behaviour as that on which acceptable behaviour is contrasted with unacceptable behaviour. New ideas appear however, which characterise acts as much as feelings, for example, sadism arid masochism.
