Analysis & Definitions of Love
This is an excerpt from the paper...
Love is a concept that motors poetry and engenders uncomfortable laughter among the English-speaking peoples (Tennov, 1979, p. 170). It has not always been so - but that it the "tradition" handed down to modern-day Americans and, as such, it is what we have to work with. Certain analyses of love are beside the point: a German maid's concept of love circa 1900, a la Freud; a Japanese noblewoman's feelings on the subject five hundred years earlier, in Lady Murasaki's erotic novel Tales of Genji; the sinuous influence of Persian attitudes in The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam as felt before the 19th century English translation by Sir Richard Burton - these may be valid perspectives on love, but they do not contribute to the American zeitgeist of the 1990s. Ours is an English-derived culture, reshaping itself to a new form only in the recent past by the sudden contraction of world space caused by two 20th century World Wars. Love is not an homogenous entity with shared perceptions around the world. It is not even a consistent perception within the Anglo-American context (Epton, 1960). It should be pointed out from the start that "love" itself is a term fraught with ambiguity (Fell, 1987, p. xxvii). "Love" is bandied about in the modern vocabulary as a synonym for affections deep and slight, for sexuality, for religious emotions, for unfulfilled passion, and for psychotic obsession (Tennov, p. 167). In attempting to define love, then, we must first eliminate those versions of u
. . .
in the Western concept of love: godly love and courtly love (Epton, pp. 45-51; Lewis, pp. 163-192). Both rely upon repression of the physical aspects of love. Godly love is the deeply-considered direction of one's thoughts and emotions toward the glorification of God. The medieval practice of the cloistered monk and nun was the paradigm of this approach. Physical acts of love were taboo, except for ritualized expressions such as prayer and chanting. St. Francis of Assisi, by insisting on charitable acts among the poor as another viable expression of religious love, met much resistance initially because it was, in fact, more physical than intellectual. Still, the tradition of godly love as the preferred sort has persisted to this day, witnessed by the example of Roman Catholic intellectuals such as C. S. Lewis, writing in The Four Loves, who puts non-physical Charity, Affection and Friendship in the first priority - while describing the physicality of Eros in diminutive terms:
Venus is a partly comic spirit. We are under no obligation at all to sing in the throbbing ... manner of Tristan and Isolde; let us often sing like Papageno and Papagena instead (p. 141).
Courtly love was a more romantic take on the human need fo
. . .
Some common words found in the essay are:
Papageno Papagena, Historically Western, Joseph Fell, Wars Love, Karen Horney, Tennov Males, English Eskimo, War II, Reik Tennov, , anglo-american culture, concept love, godly love, courtly love, women love, middle class, cultural revolution progress, 19th century, report women, hite report, hite reik tennov, love cultural, york alfred knopf, women love cultural, love cultural revolution,
Approximate Word count = 1821
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)
More Essays on Analysis & Definitions of Love
|
Customer Service
to Over
32,000 Professionally Written Papers!!!
