Your description of "falling in love with someone who isn't there" reminds me of a strange love tradition in Italy around the time of Dante: the "Stilnovisti" lovers, who committed themselves to falling in love with a lady they'd conjured in their minds--rather than with a real person. These Stilnovisti eschewed the Courtly Lovers' idolatrous and adulterous obsession upon other men's wives in favor of a more pure and intellectualized meditation upon the abstract image of a woman. I may be off here, but your article brought back memories for me of these poets I'd studied ages ago. Enjoyed the paper, thanks!