This study of historical semantics and early modern-age literary history delineates the way in which ideas about marriage, love and friendship changed radically from the 15th to the 16th century. Taking its bearings from systems and discourse theory, it examines tractates and fictional literature. Georg Wickram's prose romances take up the discourse on marriage to be found in moral theology and in stark contrast to earlier romances instantiate new forms of passionate love and friendship. As such they respond to the increasing isolation of the individual in the wake of the thoroughgoing reorganization of (German) society at that time, a phenomenon reflected both in the »Fortunatus« romance and in the course of actual historical developments.