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It has often been assumed that Europeans invented and had the exclusive monopoly over courtly and romantic love, commonly considered to be the highest form of relations between men and women. This view was particularly prevalent between 1770 and the mid-twentieth century, but was challenged in the 1960s when romantic love came to be seen as a universal sentiment that can be found in all cultures in the world. However, there remains the historical problem that the Europeans used this concept of love as a fundamental part of their self-image over a long period (traces of it still remain) and it became very much caught up in the concept of marriage. This book challenges the underlying Eurocentrism of this notion while exploring in a more general sense the connection between identity and emotions.

Luisa Passerini was Professor of Cultural History at the University of Turin, and iscurrently External Professor at the European University Institute, Florence, and Visiting Professor in the Oral History Master Program, Columbia University, New York. She has published widely on the historical relationships between the discourse on Europe and the discourses on love, gender and generation, and on memory and subjectivity. She was coeditor of Women Migrants from East to West: Gender, Mobility and Belonging in Contemporary Europe (Berghahn Books 2007).