Abstract
Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging has recently revealed passionate love to be a distinct neurophysiological state characterised by activity in primitive parts of the brain; evolutionary anthropologists now argue that love is an evolved human universal. This article suggest that this helps us to understand why literary analogues of courtly love, which C. S. Lewis regarded as the origin of romance, can be found worldwide in any century you care to mention. Marital love poetry is harder to account for in Darwinian terms; the rise of this sub-genre is examined, revealing passionate undercurrents beneath the conjugal celebrations of Coventry Patmore and Seamus Heaney.
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