Isabella of France
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Love is one of the most enduring tropes in narratology. From romance novels, to romance films, from love songs on popular radio, our lives are filled with stories of love.
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In literature
Middle Ages
Floris and Blancheflour was between the period 1200 and 1350 one of the most popular of all the romantic plots.
Renaissance
In literature
In the following excerpt, from William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Romeo, in saying "all combined, save what thou must combine By holy marriage" implies that it is not marriage with Juliet that he seeks but simply to be joined with her romantically. "I pray That thou consent to marry us" implies that the marriage means the removal of the social obstacle between the two opposing families, not that marriage is sought by Romeo with Juliet for any other particular reason, as adding to their love or giving it any more meaning.
"Then plainly know my heart's dear love is set On the fair daughter of rich Capulet: As mine on hers, so hers is set on mine; And all combined, save what thou must combine By holy marriage: when and where and how We met, we woo'd and made exchange of vow, I'll tell thee as we pass; but this I pray, That thou consent to marry us to-day." --Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene II
Shakespeare and Søren Kierkegaard share a similar viewpoint that marriage and romance are not harmoniously in tune with each other. In Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, for example, "...there has not been, nor is there at this point, any display of affection between Isabella and the Duke, if by affection we mean something concerned with sexual attraction. The two at the end of the play love each other as they love virtue." Isabella needs love, and she may reject marriage with the Duke because he seeks to beget an heir with her for her virtues, and she is not happy with the limited kind of love that implies.
Shakespeare argues that marriage, because of its purity, simply cannot incorporate romance. The extramarital nature of romance is also clarified by John Updike in his novel Gertrude and Claudius, as well as by Hamlet. This same supposition of romance is also found in the film Braveheart or rather apparent in the example of Isabella of France's life.
Romance raises questions of emotivism (or in a more pejorative sense, nihilism) such as whether spiritual attraction, of the world, might not actually rise above or distinguish itself from that of the body or aesthetic sensibility.
Kierkegaard also addressed these ideas in works such as Either/Or and Stages on Life's Way. ("In the first place, I find it comical that all men are in love and want to be in love, and yet one never can get any illumination upon the question what the lovable, i.e., the proper object of love, really is." (Stages p. 48).)
Nietzsche, while he might answer negatively to the platonic theory of love as having a transcendent object, being a naturalist, was more interested intellectually in marriage than in romance, as evinced by the many aphorisms on marriage in Human All Too Human. In any case, Nietzsche is often taken as diametrically opposed to Kierkegaard, of whom there is often supposed mention in Thus Spake Zarathustra alongside Leo Tolstoy. (Shakespeare raises a similar criticism about the meaning of love in Measure for Measure, and Love's Labors Lost is often considered Shakespeare's encomium on love.
Love at first sight in literature
- The first sight of the beautiful princess Angelica (character) in Ariosto's Orlando furioso and the witch Armida in Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered enchant the knights that perceive them; Giovanni Boccaccio's Elegy of Lady Fiammetta describes the ravages of love at first sight on a woman.
- Love at first sight occurs in Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare. Romeo falls in love with Juliet when he first sees her.
- In the novel Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, the characters Marius Pontmercy and Cosette fall in love after glancing into each others' eyes.
- 'It was love at first sight' is the opening sentence to the Joseph Heller novel, Catch-22.
- In Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid," the protagonist falls in love with a human prince when she first sees him and rescues him from drowning.
- in the Hunger Games trilogy, the character Peeta falls in love with the protagonist, Katniss, when he first saw her at the first day in school and heard her sing.
See also
- Adultery in literature
- Beauty and the beast
- Love
- Love song
- Love Story
- Story
- Romance film
- Romance novel
- Romantic love
- Romeo and Juliet
- Unrequited love
