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1.Apsara
Combing Her Hair
2.
Kandariya-Mahhadeva Temple, India
3.
Aphrodite Rising from the Sea
4.
Aphrodite
5. The Birth of Venus
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Characteristics
of idealistic love (ref
6-7)
1. merging of the lovers into one;
--derived from religious mysticism or the union between man and
God;
--not through sex, but through the sudden exchange of glances, the
touching of fingers, etc.;
2. the existence of magic; e.g.
the arrows of Cupid
3. metaphysical
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6. Birth
of Venus
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Please
go to Romantic
Passion page for Romantic concepts of Love.
- Courtly
Love--originally the kind of love between
the knight and his lady in Medieval Legends
For C.
S. Lewis in The Allegory of Love: four
characteristics--humility, courtesy, adultery, religion
of love.
Courtly love--
- sexual
love between men and women is in itself something splendid, an ideal
worth striving for;
- love
enobles both the lover and the beloved;
- being
an ethical and aesthetic attainment, sexual love cannot be reduced to
mere libidinal impulse;
- love
pertains to courtesy and courtship but is not necessarily related to
the institution of marriage;
- love
is an intense, passionate relationship that establish a holy oneness
between man and woman. (Singer 22-23)
- Neo-Platonic
Love in Renaissance--John Donne as an
example
Its
governing ambiguity: things and persons in the world are
to be loved only for the sake of a spiritual beauty that transcends
them, and yet the beautiful cannot be appreciated unless we love its
manifestations in matter (Singer 195.
John Donne-- . . . starting as
a Catholic and ending as an Anglican prelate, in his youth an
adventurous Dan Juan and in his maturity a devoted husband, Donne was
singularly equipped to appreciate the contrasting attitutdes toward
love.
Donne's
Platonism--the preeminence of soul over body, the
distinction between love and lust, and the goodness of striving for
perfection through devotion to a woman's beauty.
Donne's
Doubts--about the permanence of love, about the
likelihood of achieving reciprocity, and about the value of
fidelity--expressed in his Ovidian libertine poems (Singer 196-98).
Shakespeare:
Religious elements in Romeo
and Juliet
In shakespeare the ideal of married love is
more completely developed than ever before, while various Romantic
concepts appear as if in a prliminary approximation (Singer xiv).
- two
types of Venus (Rosaline & Juliet)
- the
suffering of the young couple serves as a Christ-like sacrifice
eliminating evil by means of love
the first courting sonnet in Romeo
and Juliet--Before the sonnet
(their first conversation), Romeo, like Byron in "She Walks
in Beauty," compares Juliet to light or jewels at night and describes
her as "true beauty," "beuty too rich for use, for earth too dear" (I.5
ll. 43-52). What kind of love (at first sight) is
this? Religious and pure? Rashful? Bear
in mind that Romeo goes to the ball to find his girlfriend Rosaline,
but not Juliet. (Please go to Shakespeare
page for other questions.)
- Juliet:
"My bounty is as boundless as the sea,/My love as deep; the more I give
to thee, /The more I have, for both are infinite."--an incarnation of
agape.
- The
use of religious metaphors, their tryst at night, as well as the fact
that their love is forbidden, put Romeo and Juiliet in the tradition of
religious and courtly love (Singer 221).
Please
go to Romantic
Passion page for Romantic concepts of Love.
Contemporary
Interpretations of Courtly Love:
Cowboy
Junkie's
7. Barbarians' Venus, Paul Klee
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8. Black
Venus
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9.
Poster for the film "Blode Venus"
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