tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post1444065531681601833..comments2024-03-26T01:10:13.720+00:00Comments on Teach Me Tonight: Quotes About Eros (Things Called Love, 3)E. M. Selingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00426524354823232002noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-23084970269069034092012-07-17T17:00:47.733+01:002012-07-17T17:00:47.733+01:00How true and how funny, Laura! Reminds me of a pa...How true and how funny, Laura! Reminds me of a passing comment from Davenport that in Sappho's time, the whomping, shattering impact of Eros was considered "as normal as rapacious greed seems to 20th century Americans," or words to that effect.E. M. Selingerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00426524354823232002noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-38821427368924363622012-07-14T15:16:31.433+01:002012-07-14T15:16:31.433+01:00Oh, and also on the physiological aspect of love, ...Oh, and also on the physiological aspect of love, it may be worth noting that for a long, long time love (of the kind designated <i>amor hereos</i>) was considered a disease, to be cured by doctors. I <a href="http://teachmetonight.blogspot.co.uk/2007/03/metaphorical-medicine-diagnosing.html" rel="nofollow">posted about that a while ago</a>.Laura Vivancohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00906661869372622821noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-57977927456234278232012-07-12T17:00:56.430+01:002012-07-12T17:00:56.430+01:00The mythology/commodification surrounding romance ...The mythology/commodification surrounding romance and anxieties over marriage. What happens to the "family" or "marriage" or "love," when we begin to think about the "single"? Cobb's use of the single as "the most despised sexual minority," is this part of the romantic myth? This line sticks out in my mind and I will need to think this through further: "To calm these new fears, the advertising industry recommended the consumption of intense romantic experiences and of seduction-enhancing products aimed at maintaining the original thrill of romance."<br /><br />I have been thinking -- and writing -- about Cobb's book for a couple of weeks now. Once thoughts are more cogent, I will figure out what to do with them.Jonathanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09577417918428286900noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-4747236925940190312012-07-12T16:47:47.519+01:002012-07-12T16:47:47.519+01:00What's the connection, Jonathan? I haven'...What's the connection, Jonathan? I haven't read the Cobb.E. M. Selingerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00426524354823232002noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-27603422337288806392012-07-12T15:49:13.023+01:002012-07-12T15:49:13.023+01:00Interesting to think about these issues when coupl...Interesting to think about these issues when coupled with all the press being given to Michael Cobb's new book: Single: Arguments for the Uncoupled.Jonathanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09577417918428286900noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-45991662578220492412012-07-12T15:17:54.600+01:002012-07-12T15:17:54.600+01:00That's a fascinating piece of cultural history...That's a fascinating piece of cultural history, Laura. It reminds me of the discussion of early 20th century advertising in Eva Illouz's book "Consuming the Romantic Utopia: Love and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism," in which the emergence of an alternative model of marriage gets discussed. <br /><br />Illouz speaks about "the new anxieties about the future and stability of marriage that had emerged in the first few decades of the twentieth century and that were widely discussed in both academic journals and popular magazines," to wit: "that marriage was a fragile enterprise and divorce a likely outcome" (41). She continues:<br /><br />"To calm these new fears, the advertising industry recommended the consumption of intense romantic experiences and of seduction-enhancing products aimed at maintaining the original thrill of romance. In other words, ads began to present marriage as a naturally dull state unless one took appropriate measures to maintain the thrill of youth and seduction. [...] The home was no longer perceived as the altar to love and as the refuge from a 'harsh' word. Instead, it was threatened by boredom and as such was now open to the incursion of ego-expressive and leisure goods" (41).<br /><br />She summarizes the shift this way:<br /><br />"...between 1900 and 1940, advertising and movies, the emerging and increasingly powerful cultural industries of the period, developed and advanced a vision of love as a utopia wherein marriage should be eternally exciting and romantic and could be if the couple participated in the realm of leisure. [...] The association of romance and leisure enforced the idea that intensity could be maintained as long as one purchased the appropriate means" (41).<br /><br />It may be, she notes, that the shift begins a bit earlier, during the Victorian period, as couples begin to believe that "it was sexuality, rather than domesticity, that united and uplifted a couple" (40, but she's quoting here from E. Rothman, <i>Hands and Hearts</i>, Harvard UP, 1984, p. 267.) A shift in gods, as Guy Davenport might say!E. M. Selingerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00426524354823232002noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-45860323476460051192012-07-12T13:47:27.548+01:002012-07-12T13:47:27.548+01:00"Satisfied desire is a fulfillment of some ki..."<i>Satisfied desire is a fulfillment of some kind and as a subject belongs to housekeeping, child rearing, reverie; that is, to the world of order.</i>"<br /><br />I've been reading John R. Gillis's <i>For Better, For Worse: British Marriages, 1600 to the Present</i> (1985) and he writes that:<br /><br />Love was regarded as something physiological as well as psychological. While natural enough to youth who "are hot and fiery by reason of the blood which boyles (boils) in their veines," it could be quite dangerous to the adult because "like a wild untamed beast it exceedes the bounds of reason [and] there is no misery which it brings not to the world, nor any disorder which it causeth not in our lives." While we expect married couples to act like lovers, in peasant and artisan society the passions expected of a suitor were to be avoided by a spouse. The love conjured in courtship was exorcised at the time of the wedding. Although husbands and wives were supposed to show consideration and respect, conjugal love was a means to marriage no its end. Too much conjugal affection was perceived as unnatural and a threat to the broader social obligations that came with the establishment of a household. Thus, the power of love, symbolized by the bride's garter, was ceremonially transferred to single persons who would require it to make their own marriages.<br />The race for the garter took place on the return from the church as part of the final act of the big wedding, the installation of the new couple as master and mistress of their own household. (73-74)<br /><br />[Gillis is quoting from Lawrence Babb, "The Physiological Conception of Love in the Elizabethan and Early Stuart Drama," <i>Proceedings of the Modern Language Association</i>, LVI, no. 4 (December 1941), p. 1025.]Laura Vivancohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00906661869372622821noreply@blogger.com