Alain De Botton's 'How Fiction Ruined Love'

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SUMMARY

In “How Fiction Ruined Love”, Alain de Bottom discussed”, de Botton (2016) discusses the role that art plays plays in thethe way love is expressedexpressed by people, he, his argument being that love is deeply shaped by the art we come in contact with. Specifically, he argues that thatthe reason why “we are so quite bad at loving” lies in the quality of novels, poems, songs and films that we as humans have been exposed to over centuries. In herhis opinion, “wisdom, reality, and maturity” are the three elements which art failsfails to incorporate, which that results in a dramatic lack of knowledge on how to approach romance, especially in young people. BottomDe Botton uses various literature examples to support herhis argument, such …show more content…

The role of art in our lives itis not to guide us through our life by depicting real, raw images of boring daily lives: it instead serves it is simply the representation of the artist’s mind, open to a completely different purpose. myriad of interpretations.

It is almost universally accepted that art sells an overly romanced picture of love. This is not, however, as Bottom believes, the problem: the. The real problem lies in the people who buy into this picture. When two lovers beginengage in a relationship, they expect it it to be just like in the books and movies they have read and watched,, and are therefore disappointed when they are presented with something so different from what they have been “taught”. Blindly believing art’s portrayal of love asBelieving that what art portrays is real love and aspiring to have relationships which are carbon copies of the ones in TV and in novels is what causes one’s love life to be problematic. Osborne (2012) research on how the portrayal of love in TV affects married couples showfound that the people who more firmly believedbelieve in the standards set by TV wereare the ones who are less committed to their partners. He continues on to state that the problem is not with the portrayal itself, but with couples insisting on comparing their own love life with the manufactured ones in

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