Love: A History in Five Fantasies Contributor(s): Rosenwein, Barbara H. (Author) |
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ISBN: 1509531831 ISBN-13: 9781509531837 Publisher: Polity Press OUR PRICE: $22.50 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: March 2022 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Psychology | Emotions - History |
Dewey: 152.41 |
LCCN: 2021012470 |
Physical Information: 1.2" H x 5.6" W x 8.6" (1.05 lbs) 200 pages |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: We make sense of love with fantasies, stories that shape feelings that are otherwise too overwhelming, incoherent, and wayward to be tamed. For love is a complex, bewildering, and ecstatic emotion covering a welter of different feelings and moral judgements. Drawing on poetry, fiction, letters, memoirs and art, and with the aid of a rich array of illustrations, historian Barbara H. Rosenwein explores five of our most enduring fantasies of love: like-minded union, transcendent rapture, selfless giving, obsessive longing, and insatiable desire. Each has had a long and kaleidoscopic history with lasting effects on how we in the West think about love today. Yet each leads to a different conclusion about what we should strive for in our relationships. If only we could peel back the layers of love and discover its true essence. But love doesn't work like that; it is constructed on the shards of experience, story, and feeling, shared over time, intertwined with other fantasies. By understanding the history of how we have loved, Rosenwein argues, we may better navigate our own tumultuous experiences, and perhaps write our own scripts. |