Addicted to Love
In Gottfried Von Strassburg’s retelling of the ancient romance, Tristan, love’s portrayal as a psychological disease is considerable. For Rivalin and Blancheflor, Tristan and Isolde, and also King Mark, the affliction causes them to act in a way that they would normally shun. Love changes the perspective on life of those who become intoxicated by its power; whether it’s shared as a couple or entirely unreciprocated, the lust to attain and secure its presence is consuming.
Love’s torment of Tristan and Isolde is a sweet torment that “noble lovers” endure. Grieves are shared, blessings are doubled, and embraces are electrifying on both the physical and emotional levels. One sided love is a hell like no other. Here, passions of the heart will override the sensibilities of the mind. This agony filled state is where Mark’s resides. This theme of unreturned love is as relevant today as it is in Gottfried’s time. Mark’s perception of the world, mentally and even at times physically, is greatly skewed by love’s drunken haze. Broken on the wheel of love, Mark’s heart is tortured until he confesses that Isolde is unfaithful; then just as cruel, he is fooled into believing she is his. This repeated scenario of torture is by far the highest tragedy in the romance. The climax of the abuse is when Mark questions his own senses after the discovery of the couple copulating in the garden. Blinded by the violent inebriation of amour, he disavows empirical proof of Isolde’s betrayal. While through the omnipotent narration the reader sees that Isolde never loves Mark, the king is nevertheless betrayed. First of course, he betrays himself. All indication points to the affair. His heart is not a friend at this point for Mark. Isolde’s betrayal goes beyond betrayal of the state; the real issue is that of betraying the heart. It is only through this betrayal that love is able to rape Mark’s psyche. Coupled with the fact that his dearest friend and confidant, Tristan, is embroiled in this nightmare; Mark is to be pitied greatly. Gottfried has Mark suffer the three greatest betrayals a person can encounter: his own, that of his lover’s and that of his friend’s. The love Mark has for both Isolde and Tristan only work against him; for had he been free of love’s grip, he would have trusted his senses and his intuitions.
Although void of all supernatural occurrences, ...
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...tan is not immune to such a change either. Interestingly, the only time he really is able to overcome love’s enslaving bonds is during the return trip to Tintagel. Here loyalty and honor win out over love’s might. This inconsistency is an odd departure from Gottfried’s theme of love’s overwhelming capacity. However, love’s reign quickly returns, and proves to be the tragic flaw of the otherwise perfect Tristan. A man who treats loyalty, honor, and chivalric codes as a religious-like ethics, has no trouble betraying not only his uncle and his friend, but his king. Gottfried is emphasizing the corruptive nature that love has over the individual. When in love, the infected wretch changes their entire perspective on life; their goals, their ethics; having all other personal desires subordinated to the intense passion to keep love’s fire raging.
Once drunk with love, the victim is likely to assume traits foreign to their character. No matter if its a sip from the chalice or a long draught from the jug, the connoisseur will risk life and limb to maintain the high. In Gottfried’s version of Tristan, love’s potency renders much pain and heartache to those who choose to pick up the habit.
... off.”(“Love’s Bond”, Robert Nozick) If that is true when loving someone, Romeo evidently made the wrong decision to kill Tybalt. By fulfilling this revenge, Romeo not only caused Juliet to be upset, but he also placed a burden on himself: an imprudent decision. After analyzing Romeo’s careless approach to risking to lose Juliet’s love, it becomes clear that Romeo’s love for Juliet is not a real romantic love, but it is a hormone-driven, passionate, hasty love that is portrayed as ruinous and preposterous by Shakespeare through Romeo’s actions.
During 1910-1970 the great migration was taking place, which was the movement of southern African American’s to the north/northern cities. The great migration was an event that seemed as if it was unstoppable and that it was going to happen. In the South African American’s faced racial discrimination, sharecropping, bad working conditions, low wages, racial segregation and political detriments. This is all supported by documents 1-4. The great migration was an event which helped improve the conditions for African Americans in America.
In one of Shakespeare’s most masterful pieces, he depicts a tragic love story in which love conquers all…but at what cost? The truth is in this play, love is the victor, but with horrible consequences. Love lives on, love survives, but only at the loss of life. Not only in this play, but in many other Shakespearean works, the constant theme stands that any kind of marriage or deep emotional bond which is solely based on love ends tragically. Othello’s passionate love for Desdemona is the same passion that causes him to end her life. Antony, under the suspicion that Cleopatra has died, tries to commit suicide to only find out soon after that she is alive and in hiding, but all in vain for the fatal wound has already pricked it’s victim. Shakespeare constantly relates love with tragedy, stating that love is in fact fleeting and impermanent. The only way for love to live forever is if it dies young.
In Dryden's Lucretius, the speaker argues that (1) Love is a sickness, (2) Love's sickness enslaves, and (3) all attempts to remedy Love's sickness are vain and will only frustrate the lover. Just as Milton's Adam and Eve become enslaved to sin by disobeying God, so mankind becomes enslaved to Love when pierced with Cupid's "winged arrow". In Milton, there is redemption and freedom through Christ, but in Dryden, no salvation from love is possible. This poem leaves mankind in a hopeless, frustrated state, unable to break free from love's yoke. This essay will center on the last heroic couplet: "All wayes they try, successeless all they prove,/To cure the secret sore of lingering love".
Concussions are very common. In the United States alone 1.4 million people suffer from concussions annually (Schafer). Researchers studied fifty brains of people who have suffered from concussions t...
Medieval and Renaissance literature develops the concepts of love and marriage and records the evolution of the relation between them. In Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Christian love clashes with courtly love, as men and women grapple with such issues as which partner should rule in marriage, the proper, acceptable role of sex in marriage, and the importance of love as a basis for a successful marriage. Works by earlier writers portray the medieval literary notion of courtly love, the sexual attraction between a chivalric knight and his lady, often the knight's lord's wife. The woman, who generally held mastery in these relationships based on physical desire and consummation, dictated the terms of the knight's duties and obligations, much like a feudal lord over a vassal. This microcosm of romance between man and woman was anchored by the macrocosm of the bonds among men and their fealty to their lord. The dominance of women and fealty to the leader in courtly love contrasts with the dominance ...
In one of William Shakespeare’s most renowned and celebrated plays, the story of a General named Othello unravels in tragic form as he falls victim to the lies created by Iago. Once revered as a war hero and wed to the beautiful Desdemona, Othello’s life spirals downward with the untimely death of his beloved in his own hands, ultimately ending with his own demise. Love is the force behind this tragedy. Tragedy is the main driving force that brings happiness and tragedy to the characters within the play. But even as such a prominent force, it lacks clear definition. Love has a different meaning to the characters in the play. Characters like Othello, Desdemona, and Iago all have different perspectives on love, which informs their behavior in different ways.
“The Knight’s Tale”, for example, uses the concept of a knight not only to parody the concept of the hero, but also to question the well-established courtly love convention. This last concept refers to a set of ideas about love that was enormously influential on the literature and culture of the medieval times for it gave men the chance to feel freely. Also, it gave women the opportunity to be an important element in the story – not only decorative. However, when scrutinizing the tale, the readers can realise that all the aspects of a knight’s love are exaggerated and conveyed throu...
The internal conflict of alcohol addiction expressed by “used to spend my nights out in a barroom” is battled by the power of love that is conveyed through “’Cause there’s nothing like your love to get me high”. The conflict is solved for the speaker by his lover’s irresistible love that is compared as a parallel to an alcohol addiction. The speaker is talking to this person that saved him from alcoholism so that this person knows how he appreciates her and how there is no love that compares to theirs.
William Shakespeare, an illustrious and eminent playwright from the Elizabethan Age (16th Century) and part owner of the Globe theatre wrote A Midsummer Night’s Dream in which he portrays the theme of love in many different ways. These include the paternal love seen in the troubled times for Egeus and his rebellious daughter Hermia, true Love displayed with the valiant acts of Lysander and Hermia and the destructive love present in the agonizing acts of Titania towards her desperate lover Oberon. Through the highs and lows of love, the first love we clasp is the paternal love from our family.
One of the main themes in The Scarlet Letter is that of the secret. The plot of the book is centered on Hester Prynne’s secret sin of adultery. Nathaniel Hawthorne draws striking parallelism between secrets held and the physical and mental states of those who hold them. The Scarlet Letter demonstrates that a secret or feeling kept within slowly engulfs and destroys the soul such as Dimmesdale’s sin of hypocrisy and Chillingworth’s sin of vengeance, while a secret made public, such as Prynne’s adultery, can allow a soul to recover and even strengthen.
The tales of King Arthur and many of their numerous characters are well known in literature. The Arthurian world is one of the great myths of modern times. Those great pieces of literature have many common themes, one of them being courtly love “L’amour Courtois”. This paper talks of courtly love as seen in King Arthur’s world especially examining “Yvain or the Knight with the Lion” and “Lancelot: or the Knight of the Cart”. Furthermore, one of the goals is to show how that courtly love could be seen in today in our world.
Marie de France’s “Lanval” is a Breton lai dominated by themes common to 12th century literature, which through its exploration of love, erotic desire, wealth, gender and community, tells the story of a young knight who finds himself caught between two worlds: his lover’s and his own. Forced to separate these societies by a warning in which his lover states, “do not let any man know about this…you would lose me for good if this love were known” (Lines 145-148), Lanval must keep his love a secret and exist apart from the Arthurian world into which he was born. Consequently, romantic love between Lanval and his fairie queen exists conditionally, that is upon Lanval’s physical and emotional isolation. This restriction suggests that romantic love, as described in terms of erotic desire and physical/emotional devotion throughout “Lanval,” is unsuited for existence in the mundanity of Arthurian society. Therefore, Lanval’s solitude is necessary for his maintaining his relationship with the fairie queen, a fact that suggests the incompatibility of romantic love with Arthurian society, as Marie depicts it.
In the play “Romeo and Juliet”, Shakespeare shows that love has power to control one’s actions, feelings, and the relationship itself through the bond between a destined couple. The passion between the pair grew strong enough to have the capability to do these mighty things. The predestined newlyweds are brought down a rocky road of obstacles learning love’s strength and the meaning of love.
“The Wife of Bath’s Tale” is written in an entertaining and adventurous spirit, but serves a higher purpose by illustrating the century’s view of courtly love. Hundreds, if not thousands, of other pieces of literature written in the same century prevail to commemorate the coupling of breathtaking princesses with lionhearted knights after going through unimaginable adventures, but only a slight few examine the viability of such courtly love and the related dilemmas that always succeed. “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” shows that women desire most their husband’s love, Overall, “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” shows that the meaning of true love does not stay consistent, whether between singular or separate communities and remains timeless as the depictions of love from this 14th century tale still hold true today.