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| | Proposing Courtship |
 | | Pamphilus opens by greeting Maria not by name but as “you cruel, hardhearted, unyielding creature”: he finds her cruel because she is hard—hearted, and hard—hearted because she is unyielding. |
 | | Pamphilus is made to enumerate the signs that promise marital success: her good birth and good education, the friendship of their respective families, their own lifelong and intimate acquaintance, similar temperaments, equal age, and, especially, the likelihood of friendship based on compatible tastes. |
 | | Pamphilus is in love, not just in lust, and while this makes him vulnerable to poetical exaggeration and prone to fantastical excess, his love indicates his capacity to look beyond himself, to be moved by more than selfish calculation, to risk ridicule, rejection, and failure. |
| www.catholiceducation.org /articles/sexuality/se0024.html (5623 words) |
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