This paper aims to address the question: ‘Is Romantic love the same world over?’ by studying the experience, expression and manifestation of Romantic love in Guadeloupe’s (2006) and Du’s (2008) ethnographic accounts. We meet, we fall in love, we get hurt, we part, and then we meet again. Sounds familiar? Yet, a simple question like, ‘How do you know you are in love?’ baffles many. The study of human emotions began in the late 1970s and has flourished since; centring on the role it plays in the personal and social life of the individual, and how culture influences emotion (Lutz & White 1986: 405, 410). Love is considered to be one of the six, fundamental emotions surrounding human attachment (Lindholm 1982 in Lutz & White 1986: 411), and has been defined as the strong feeling of affection or attraction, which is more profound than fondness (Oxford Dictionary of Psychology 2009). Consequently, the notion of “Love” has long been a topic of interest, leading to an explosion of literature on love (Sarsby 1983: 20). However, the concept of Romantic love (also known as passionate love) has been less researched (Lindholm 2006: 7). This is perplexing, considering how often Romantic love is portrayed in popular culture. As such, these influential imageries of romance inexorably overrun, influence and drive our everyday lives (Lindholm 2006: 5). Except, what is Romantic love? Romantic love itself is an ambiguous emotion (Sarsby 1983: 16). At best, it can be defined as the feeling of powerful attraction that encompasses the idealism of the other, within a sexual situation, and is expected to be long lasting (Jankowiak & Fischer 1992: 150). In addition to its ambiguity, there has been concern with its worldwide prevalence. Despite Janko... ... middle of paper ... ...oss Cultures, Columbia University Press, New York and Chichester, West Sussex, pp. 1-36. Lindholm, C 2006, Romantic Love and Anthropology. Etnofoor, vol.19, no.1, pp. 5-21. ‘Love and Marriage’ 1955, on This is Sinatra!, CD, KHJ Studios, Hollywood. Written by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen, and performed by Frank Sinatra. Lutz, C & White, G. M 1986, The Anthropology of Emotions. Annual Review of Anthropology, vol.15, pp. 405-436. Oxford Dictionary of Psychology, 3rd edn, 2009, Oxford University Press, New York, United States. Sarsby, J 1983, Romantic Love And Society: It’s Place In The Modern World. Penguin Books: Middlesex, England. Stevenson, A 2008, Is love culturally relative? Andrew Stevenson explores research into whether the experience of falling in love is the same the world over. Psychology Review, vol. 14, no.2, p.8.
In The New Humanities Reader edited by Richard E. Miller and Kurt Spellmeyer. We read about Barbara Fredrickson the author of the book “Love 2.0” copy right (2013). Barbara Fredrickson is a psychologist who show in her research how our supreme emotion affects everything we Feel, Think, Do and become. Barbara also uses her research from her lab to describe her ideas about love. She defines love not as a romance or stable emotion between friends, partners and families, but as a micro-moment between all people even stranger (108). She went farther in her interpretation of love and how the existence of love can improve a person’s mental and physical health (107). Through reading
The article '' love: the right chemistry'' by Anastasia Toufexis efforts to explain the concept of love from a scientific aspect in which an amateur will understand. Briefly this essay explains and describe in a scientific way how people's stimulation of the body works when you're falling in love. The new scientific researches have given the answer through human physiology how genes behave when your feelings for example get swept away. The justification for this is explained by how the brain gets flooded by chemicals. The author expresses in one point that love isn't just a nonsense behavior nor a feeling that exhibits similar properties as of a narcotic drug. This is brought about by an organized chemical chain who controls different depending on the individual. A simple action such as a deep look into someone's eyes can start the simulation in the body that an increased production of hand sweat will start. The tingly feeling inside your body is a result of a scientific delineation which makes the concept of love more concretely and more factually mainly for researchers and the wide...
Since we are kids we are taught the importance and meaning of love. Obviously, when we are kids we don’t realize such a big felling, until we grow up. I would say that love isn’t the feeling of intense hormonal urges; it is much more than that. It’s a real genuine feeling. The intense connection of true love cannot be broken because true love is unconditional and it has no boundaries. I have read many books about love, but in this case this book I would talk about is special because it makes us ask many questions about ourselves. Gabriel Garcia Marquez without writing it in the book Love in the Time of Cholera sets the question how long could we will be willing to wait for love? Since the first moment we open the book we can see it is going to be about love, so after reading some chapters we can ask ourselves about this question, and that obviously traps us. Love in the Time of Cholera is a novel that has a very strong meaning of love, some types of love presented in this books focuses on pure, and innocent, passionate, interested, divided love and among others, but the good thing about these kinds of love is that it gives the readers a teaching.
The unceasing question of what defines love continually inspires writers to share their perceptions with their audience. Throughout our childhood we are naturally inclined to believe and expect what media depicts for us. Disney movies such as Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White all follow the standard plot of a beautiful girl and a handsome young man falling in love without any complexity to their relationship. Their newly discovered love for one another forms quite simply throughout the movie and then they live happily ever after. As we mature, our innocence fades and the naïve perception of love slowly begins to be disassembled as we are brought into reality. Simply observing our own parents’ relationship can prove that love does
Many people want to have a romantic love in their life; however, romance is such abstract feeling so that we do not know whether it exists or not. In many cases, we can find that romantic love do exist in varieties of movie, song, and even books. Therefore, some people do believe that romantic love exists, and they feel that romantic love does not seem to be abstract. For example, we can find in many movies that the main male character sees the main female character, and then all of a sudden, he realizes that she is the one he wants to be with for the rest of his life, and vice versa. We also can find the same scenes in numerous of songs and books. After all of these movies, songs, and books, we seem to be hypnotized; there is such thing as we called “romantic love.” In the American Heritage Dictionary, romantic is defined “expressive of or conducive to love.” However, what is love? According to the American Heritage Dictionary, love is defined as deep affection and warm feeling for another. Besides this one, love also have another definition such as, the emotion of sex and romance; strong sexual desire for another person. The ideal romantic love—expressive of deep affection and warm feeling for another—is what we’ve been taught the true meaning of romantic love is. But according to the American Heritage Dictionary, romantic love can also mean the expressive of strong sexual desire for another person. It comes down to one question—Does the ideal romantic love really exist or not. According to Andrew Sullivan in the Love Bloat: Why Obsess Over Romance?, there is not such thing called romantic love as we idealized, and his opinion about romantic love is right; there is not such thing called romantic love.
The key concept I've chosen for analysis is the practice of love. The practice of love defined in our lecture while we were discussing ‘Cherry’ by Chandra Mayor is when people admire one another. It is when people are able to trust one another with their secrets. It is the ability to trust other people, having mutual respect for one another. The practices of love also defined in our lecture as a sexual passion that is mutual. To get a better understanding of what practices of love is, in Chandra Mayor's book "Cherry" practices of love is displayed when the narrator explains how her significant other admires her and the art piece she created. ‘Tom loves my poems. He thinks they’re beautiful. He says They’re beautiful, you’re beautiful’ (Chandra
The article, “Measurement of Romantic Love” written by Zick Rubin, expresses the initial research aimed at presenting and validating the social-psychological construct of romantic love. The author assumed that love should be measured independently from liking. In this research, the romantic love was also conceptualized to three elements: affiliative and depend need, an orientation of exclusiveness and absorption, and finally a predisposition to help.
Despite being one of the most powerful emotions, the definition of love cannot be encompassed in one, singular statement. However, it can be said that love is a fundamental life force experienced by all beings, humans and animals alike. The complexity of love can be explained by the fact that there are many different types of love that exist. Romantic love is characterized by feelings of desire and affection between two people. Parental love highlights the protective, caring relationship shared by parent and child. Platonic love is the supportive, closely-knit connection that occurs among friends. While love in all forms is beautiful, the nature of love can sometimes become obsessive, and fog all other thoughts that an individual has. This obsessiveness, in turn, can have disastrous effects on the individual and those around him or her. In literature, the obsessive love often serves as the central focus of books, short stories, plays, and poems. The Great
Love is a type of language, feeling, and action that is universal, yet so unclearly defined. The earliest form of love that can be felt and expressed usually takes place in the family. Through maturation, love is introduced in a different light, one that is often romanticized and idealized. Roland Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse and Jeffrey Eugenides’ “Extreme Solitude” provide their own, realistic take on love. However, they do not explicitly define love, but attempt to describe it in the most familiar way to the audience: in the perspective of a lover. Though love is a type of interpersonal relationship, it is essentially intrapersonal as humans cannot share the emotions of another.
Love is a mysterious force that controls people as well as their actions. It is important to note that love has great power over our life decisions and thoughts. Love requires us to be loyal so we just find ourselves complying to it. There are those people who believe that love solves a lot of relationship problems while there are those who think that love creates uncountable problems between partners. Both sides of the arguments are correct depending on the type of relationship between two individuals. The difference is that either the benefits of love outweigh the disadvantages or vice versa. According to Kipnis, love is a major cause of most challenges among individuals in a relationship. This paper supports Kipnis in her argument that love
Previously, in Literature class, My peers and I read an excerpt from a chapter titled "The Myth of Romantic Love" from the book titled The Road Less Traveled by Dr. Scott Peck. The author acknowledges that the myth of romantic love that we've all seen in movies as young children, is a lie. This doesn't mean that we will never find love, but it won't come as easily as we see it in movies. Unfortunately, this idea of romantic love can be found in movies as well as in music. Sometimes, you may not realize that you're holding on to this idea of romantic love. Some people only realize after a hard breakup or divorce that they were holding on to the common romantic love scenarios.
"What Is Love: Theories on the Greatest Emotion of All Time." World News. N.p., 13 Dec. 2012. Web. 09 May 2014. .
Love is many things; it has not one description that can be pin pointed. Love can be described as the openness of a relationship, the sexual attraction between partners, or can be seen as pure attraction to each other’s personalities. In Jonathon Haidt’s book, The Happiness Hypothesis, he writes about the types of love there are and which he believes is the most important. There are two main types of love, companionate and passionate love. Haidt defines true love as companionate love, having more importance in a relationship than that of passionate love. Companionate love is perceived as a stronger love than Passionate love, because of a better understanding in companionship and passionate love will not be everlasting. The idea of companionate over passionate makes sense, but media has formed a different outlook on love that has warped the genuine imagery of love.
...he sweat and painstaking talent artists put into a piece of art. Likewise, when an onlooker sees a couple in love, how are they to distinguish whether it is true love or merely youthful, immature love? For this reason, only experienced lovers are capable of detecting true love in others. The potential beauty of love is held at the mercy of the two lovers. Thus the extent to which the love will mature depends on the unpredictable course the journey of love takes throughout its progressive stages. As with a painting, at it’s beginning, love has the potential to be something powerful and immortal. Easy love is happy, immature love. For love to be deep and meaningful, it must face challenges and overcome adversity. Love is the artwork of nature. Like the beautiful and serene calm after a vicious storm, love is often dangerous and uncomfortable before it can be lovely.
According to the principles of Hippocratic medicine passionate love almost invariably turns into ‘love melancholy’ - a form of depression. Moreover, anybody who has experienced falling in love will know something of love’s illness- an emotional roller coaster that seems to carry the occupant between the two extremes of heaven and hell (Paul, 1993, p. 91). Even a superficial examination of artistic works on the theme of love will reveal a striking duality. Love is rarely described as a wholly pleasant experience. It is an amalgam of seemingly incompatible