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Love

A History in Five Fantasies
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( 43 ratings, 6 reviews)
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
Love by Barbara H. Rosenwein delves into the deep and varied history of love, exploring how this powerful emotion has been understood and expressed throughout different cultures and time periods. The book examines the societal and political influences on the concept of love, providing a comprehensive analysis that spans from ancient to modern times. This compelling historical narrative offers insights into how our understanding of love has evolved and its impact on human experiences and relationships.
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Format: Hardback
$3099
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

This book may appeal to you if you're fascinated by the historical evolution of emotions and how love has been shaped by cultural, social, and religious contexts throughout history. It offers an insightful exploration of how love has influenced military and social structures, making it a compelling read for those interested in the intricate ways human emotions have been understood and expressed over the ages.

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"A learned guide through the labyrinth of love"--

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

We make sense of love with fantasies, stories that shape feelings that are otherwise too overwhelming, incoherent, and wayward to be tamed. For love is a complex, bewildering, and ecstatic emotion covering a welter of different feelings and moral judgements.

Drawing on poetry, fiction, letters, memoirs, and art, and with the aid of a rich array of illustrations, historian Barbara H. Rosenwein explores five of our most enduring fantasies of love: like-minded union, transcendent rapture, selfless giving, obsessive longing, and insatiable desire. Each has had a long and tangled history with lasting effects on how we in the West think about love today. Yet each leads to a different conclusion about what we should strive for in our relationships.

If only we could peel back the layers of love and discover its true essence. But love doesn’t work like that; it is constructed on the shards of experience, story, and feeling, shared over time, intertwined with other fantasies. By understanding the history of how we have loved, Rosenwein argues, we may better navigate our own tumultuous experiences and perhaps write our own scripts.

Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

Barbara H. Rosenwein's Love is praised for its insightful exploration of the history of love, blending scholarly depth with engaging readability. The book delves into five historical fantasies that shape modern romance, offering readers a fresh and thought-provoking perspective. Reviewers highlight its capacity to stimulate discussion, appreciating its originality and the clarity with which it portrays the evolution of romantic myths.

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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781509531837

Publisher: John Wiley and Sons Ltd

Format: Hardback

Date Published: 01 October 2021

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Polity Press

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 31.0mm

Width: 140.0mm

Height: 218.0mm

Weight: 476g

Pages: 200

About the Author

Barbara H. RosenweinΒ is internationally recognized for her work in the history of emotions, a field she helped to pioneer. Her books explore the many ways in which different groups have experienced, valued, and expressed emotions over time. There are no universal, β€œbasic emotions,” but all of us have feelings shaped by (and shaping in turn) the β€œemotional communities” in which we live. Rosenwein has taught and lectured around the world, but her home is near Chicago, where she lives with her husband, Tom.

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