Overview

Why is ‘love’ taken for granted as a part of human experience? And why is sexual or romantic love in particular so important to us? This book aims to find out, tracing the intellectual history of sexual love, from the ancient Greeks to the modern day. Erotic Love in Sociology, Philosophy and Literature shows how discourses of love have intersected with social and cultural trends, as well as with personal events and experiences. Beginning with the queering of love in Greek antiquity, it looks at how sexual love has been sung about, fictionalized and theorized as a cornerstone of the formation of Western culture. From the courtly love of twelfth-century troubadours and the rise of affective individualism in the eighteenth century, to the way the novel helped catalyze and crystallize the hopes and contradictions of love and marriage, these are decisive episodes in the history of romantic love. Lastly, the book deals with how sociologists and feminist theorists have made sense of the liberalization of sexuality over the last fifty years, especially given the post-romantic pragmatism of commercialized dating practices. Arguing against the over-rationalism of intimate life, Erotic Love in Sociology, Philosophy and Literature recognizes the need to liberate love from patriarchal, racist and homophobic prejudices, and highlights the value of literary and sociological traditions to emphasize how they dignify the rhapsodies and the sufferings of love.

Full Product Details

Author:   Finn Bowring
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Imprint:   Bloomsbury Academic
Weight:   0.564kg
ISBN:  

9781350092228

ISBN 10:   1350092223
Pages:   288
Publication Date:   22 August 2019
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Dedication Epigraph Introduction: Love is Love is Love. 1. Eros in Ancient Athens Eros, erastes, eromenos All things in moderation Greek pederasty and the problematisation of pleasure Philia, friendship and reciprocity 2. Platonic Love The Symposium: Phaedrus and Pausanias Aristophanes Socrates and Diotima The ladder of love What about me? Love in Plato's Phaedrus Enter Alcibiades The double flame The anthropology of love 3. Courtly Love Tristan and Iseult The cautery of desire The religious origins of courtly love Eros vs agape The feminism of love The sanctity of the person 4. Affective Individualism and the Conjugal Family A family state of mind Love before modernity The sexual revolution Women in early capitalism Affective individualism and bourgeois romanticism Marriage and the double standard Troubled pleasures 5. Novel Passions `Reader, I married him.' Romance and the Slave Narrative The improbability of love Love is in the head Subverting gender Conjugal love disrupted Love and nature 6. Lawrence's Love The individual against society Utopia and disappointment The sensuality of woman The sacrament of marriage Lawrence's worldliness `Repress nothing!' The liberation of Frieda Weekley Lawrence in love The dialectic of love 7. The Classical Sociology of Love Even Marxists fall in love The desacralisation of marriage The beloved's right to secrecy The sacrament of sex The asceticism of Max Weber The parcelling-out of the soul Between passion and cognition 8. Religion, Rationality and Eroticism in Max Weber Religious rejections and the acosmism of love The search for meaning Aestheticism and eroticism Weber falls in love Rationalisation revisited 9. Love in Late Modernity Repressive desublimation The deployment of sexuality Reflexive rationalisation and the pure relationship The fatal heroism of love The casualization of love Existential love Emotional capitalism Love's hurtful reason Hierarchies of emotional competence Conclusion: Reclaiming the Romantic Imaginary References Index

Reviews

Offers fascinating, wide-ranging scholarship on erotic love. * Times Higher Education * Erotic Love in Sociology, Philosophy and Literature provides rich intellectual resources to think with, and about, love. In a sweep that takes us from ancient Athens through courtly love to late modernity, it demands that we engage with the multiple lenses through which love has been understood – such as the philosophical, the literary, the historical, the political and the sociological. It is a thoughtful, ambitious and deeply engaged book, characterised by a generosity of intellectual engagement and a marked curiosity about the power of feeling. It is a book to learn from, but also to enjoy. * Claire Langhamer, Professor Of Modern British History, University of Sussex, UK *

Erotic Love in Sociology, Philosophy and Literature provides rich intellectual resources to think with, and about, love. In a sweep that takes us from ancient Athens through courtly love to late modernity, it demands that we engage with the multiple lenses through which love has been understood - such as the philosophical, the literary, the historical, the political and the sociological. It is a thoughtful, ambitious and deeply engaged book, characterised by a generosity of intellectual engagement and a marked curiosity about the power of feeling. It is a book to learn from, but also to enjoy. * Claire Langhamer, Professor Of Modern British History, University of Sussex, UK *

Offers fascinating, wide-ranging scholarship on erotic love. * Times Higher Education * Erotic Love in Sociology, Philosophy and Literature provides rich intellectual resources to think with, and about, love. In a sweep that takes us from ancient Athens through courtly love to late modernity, it demands that we engage with the multiple lenses through which love has been understood - such as the philosophical, the literary, the historical, the political and the sociological. It is a thoughtful, ambitious and deeply engaged book, characterised by a generosity of intellectual engagement and a marked curiosity about the power of feeling. It is a book to learn from, but also to enjoy. * Claire Langhamer, Professor Of Modern British History, University of Sussex, UK *

Author Information

Finn Bowring is Senior Lecturer of Sociology at Cardiff University, UK. He is the author of Science, Seeds and Cyborgs: Biotechnology and the Appropriation of Life (2003) and Hannah Arendt: An Introduction (2011).

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