Romance is a general term that refers to the
attempt to express
love with words or deeds. It
also refers to
feelings of
excitement associated with love.
In the context of romantic love relationships, romance usually
implies an expression of one's love, or one's deep emotional
desires to connect with another person. This is especially apparent
in
platonic love where
sexual drive is sublimated into an artful
expression of desire.
Historically, the term "romance" originates with the
medieval ideal of
chivalry as set out in its
Romance literature.
General definition
The debate over an exact definition of love may be found in
literature as well as in the works of psychologists, philosophers,
biochemists and other professionals and specialists. Romantic love
is a
relative term, but generally
accepted as a definition that distinguishes moments and situations
within
interpersonal
relationships to an individual as contributing to a significant
relationship connection.
In relationships
During the initial stages of a romantic relationship, there is more
often more emphasis on
emotions -
especially those of
love,
intimacy,
compassion,
appreciation, and
affinity - rather than physical
intimacy.
Within an established relationship, romantic love can be defined as
a freeing or optimizing of
intimacy in a
particularly luxurious manner (or the opposite as in the
"natural"), or perhaps in greater spirituality, irony, or peril to
the relationship. It may seem like a contradiction that romance is
opposed to spirituality and yet would be strengthened by it, but
the fleeting quality of romance might stand out in greater clarity
as a couple explore a higher meaning.
In culture,
arranged marriages and
betrothals are customs that may
conflict with romance due to the nature of the
arrangement. It is possible, however, that romance and love can
exist between the partners in an arranged marriage.
Historical definition
Historians believe that the actual English word "romance" developed
from a
vernacular dialect within the
French language meaning "verse narrative" - referring to the style
of speech, writing, and artistic talents within
elite classes. The word was originally an adverb of
the Latin origin "Romanicus," meaning "of the
Roman style." The connecting notion is that
European medieval vernacular tales were usually about chivalric
adventure, not combining the idea of love until late into the
seventeenth century.
The word "romance" has also developed with other meanings in other
languages such as the early nineteenth century Spanish and Italian
definitions of "adventurous" and "passionate", sometimes combining
the idea of "love affair" or "idealistic quality."
In
primitive societies, tension
existed between
marriage and the erotic,
but this was mostly expressed in taboo regarding the menstrual
cycle and birth.
Anthropologists such as
Claude Levi-Strauss show that there were
complex forms of courtship in ancient as well as contemporary
primitive societies. There may not be evidence, however, that
members of such societies formed loving relationships distinct from
their established customs in a way that would parallel modern
romance.
Before the 18th century, as now, there were many marriages that
were not arranged – having risen out of more or less spontaneous
relationships. After the 18th century, illicit relationships took
on a more independent role. In bourgeois marriage, illicitness may
have become more formidable and likely to cause tension.
In
Ladies of the Leisure Class, Rutgers University
professor Bonnie G. Smith depicts courtship
and marriage rituals that may be viewed as oppressive to modern
people. She writes "When the young women of the Nord married, they
did so without illusions of love and romance. They acted within a
framework of concern for the reproduction of bloodlines according
to financial, professional, and sometimes political interests."
Subsequent
sexual revolution has
lessened the conflicts arising out of liberalism, but not
eliminated them.
Popularization of love
The concept of romantic love was popularized in
Western culture by the game of
courtly love.
Troubadours in the
Middle
Ages engaged in trysts - usually extramarital - with women as a
game created for fun rather than for
marriage. Since at the time marriage was a formal
arrangement, courtly love was a way for people to express the love
typically not found in their marriage. In the context of courtly
love, "lovers" did not refer necessarily to those engaging in
sex, but rather in the act of emotional loving.
These lovers had short trysts in secret that escalated mentally but
never physically. Rules of the game were even codified. For
example,
De amore or
The Art of Courtly Love, as it is known in English, was
written in the 12th century. It lists such rules as "Marriage is no
real excuse for not loving", "He who is not jealous cannot love",
"No one can be bound by a double love", and "When made public love
rarely endures".
Some believe that romantic love evolved independently in multiple
cultures. For example, in an article presented by Henry Gruenbaum,
he argues "
therapists mistakenly
believe that romantic love is a
phenomenon unique to Western cultures and first
expressed by the troubadours of the Middle Ages."
The more current and Western traditional terminology meaning "court
as lover" or the general idea of "romantic love" is believed to
have originated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, primarily from that of the French culture. This idea is
what has spurred the connection between the words "romantic" and
"lover," thus
coining English phrases for
romantic love such as "loving like the Romans do." The precise
origins of such a connection are unknown, however. Although the
word "romance" or the equivalents thereof may not have the same
connotation in other cultures, the general idea of "romantic love"
appears to have crossed cultures and been accepted as a concept at
one point in time or another.
Types of romantic love
Romantic love is contrasted with
platonic
love which in all usages precludes sexual relations, yet only
in the modern usage does it take on a fully
asexual sense, rather than the classical sense in
which sexual drives are sublimated.
Sublimation tends to be forgotten
in casual thought about love aside from its emergence in
psychoanalysis and Nietzsche.
Unrequited love can be romantic in
different ways: comic, tragic, or in the sense that sublimation
itself is comparable to romance, where the spirituality of both art
and
egalitarian ideals is combined with
strong character and emotions. Unrequited love is typical of the
period of
romanticism, but the term is
distinct from any romance that might arise within it.
Romantic love may also be classified according to two categories,
"popular romance" and "divine or spiritual" romance:
- Popular romance may include but is not limited
to the following types: idealistic, normal intense (such as the
emotional aspect of "falling in
love"), predictable as well as unpredictable, consuming
(meaning consuming of time, energy and emotional withdrawals and
bids), intense but out of control (such as the aspect of "falling
out of love") material and commercial (such as societal gain
mentioned in a later section of this article), physical and sexual,
and finally grand and demonstrative.
- Divine (or spiritual) romance may include, but
is not limited to these following types: realistic, as well as
plausible unrealistic, optimistic as well as pessimistic (depending
upon the particular beliefs held by each person within the
relationship.), abiding (e.g. the theory that each person had a
predetermined stance as an agent of choice; such as "choosing a
husband" or "choosing a soul mate."), non-abiding (e.g. the theory
that we do not choose our actions, and therefore our romantic love
involvement has been drawn from sources outside of ourselves),
predictable as well as unpredictable, self control (such as
obedience and sacrifice within the context of the relationship) or
lack thereof (such as disobedience within the context of the
relationship), emotional and personal, soulful (in the theory that
the mind, soul, and body, are one connected entity), intimate, and
infinite (such as the idea that love itself or the love of a
god or God's "unconditional" love is or could be
everlasting, if particular beliefs were, in fact, true.)
In philosophy
Greek philosophers and authors have had many theories of
love.
Plato
Some of these thories are presented in
Plato's
Symposium. Six Athenian friends, including Socrates, drink
wine and each give a speech praising the
deity
Eros. When his turn comes,
Aristophanes says in his
mythical speech that sexual partners seek each other
because they are descended from beings with spherical torsos, two
sets of human limbs, genitalia on each side, and two faces back to
back. Their three forms included the three permutations of pairs of
gender (i.e. one masculine and masculine, another feminine and
feminine, and the third masculine and feminine) and they were split
by the gods to thwart the creatures' assault on heaven,
recapitulated, according to the comic playwright, in other myths
such as the
Aloadae.
This story is relevant to modern romance partly because of the
image of reciprocity it shows between the sexes. In the final
speech before
Alcibiades arrives,
Socrates gives his encomium of love and
desire as a lack of being, namely, the being or form of
beauty.
French philospher
Gilles Deleuze
linked this idea of love as a lack mainly to
Sigmund Freud, and Deleuze often criticized
it.
René Girard
Though there are many theories of romantic love such as that of
Robert Sternberg in which it is
merely a mean combining liking and sexual desire, the major
theories involve far more insight. For most of the 20th century,
Freud's theory of the family drama dominated theories of romance
and sexual relationships. This has given rise to a few
counter-theories. Theorists like Deleuze counter Freud and
Jacques Lacan by attempting to return to a
more naturalistic philosophy:
René Girard argues that romantic
attraction is a product of
jealousy and
rivalry - particularly in a
triangular form
Girard, in any case, downplays romance's individuality in favor of
jealousy and the
love triangle, arguing that romantic
attraction arises primarily in the observed attraction between two
others. A natural objection is that this is
circular reasoning, but Girard means that
a small measure of attraction reaches a critical point insofar as
it is caught up in
mimesis. Shakespeare's
A Midsummer Night's Dream,
As You Like It, and
The Winter's Tale are the best known examples of
competitive-induced romance.
Girard's theory of mimetic desire is controversial because of its
alleged
sexism. This view has to some extent
supplanted its predecessor, Freudian Oedipal theory. It may find
some spurious support in the supposed attraction of women to
aggressive men. As a technique of attraction, often combined with
irony, it is sometimes advised that one feign toughness and
disinterest, but it can be a trivial or crude idea to promulgate to
men, and it is not given with much understanding of mimetic desire
in mind.
Mimetic desire is often challenged by
feminists, such as
Toril
Moi, who argue that it does not account for the woman as
inherently desired.
Though the centrality of rivalry is not itself a cynical view, it
does emphasize the mechanical in love relations. In that sense, it
does resonate with
capitalism and
cynicism native to post-modernity. Romance
in this context leans more on fashion and irony, though these were
important for it in less emancipated times.
Sexual revolutions have brought change to
these areas. Wit or irony therefore ecompass an instability of
romance that is not entirely new but has a more central social
role, fine-tuned to certain modern peculiarities and subversion
originating in various social revolutions, culminating mostly in
the 1960s.
Arthur Schopenhauer
The process of courtship also contributed to
Arthur Schopenhauer's pessimism, despite
his own romantic success, and he argued that to be rid of the
challenge of courtship would drive people to suicide with boredom.
Schopenhauer theorized that individuals seek partners who share
certain interests and tastes, while at the same time looking for a
"complement" or completing of themselves in a partner, as in the
cliché that "opposites attract."
Other philosophers
Later modern philosophers such as
La
Rochefoucauld,
David Hume and
Jean-Jacques Rousseau also
focused on
morality, but desire was central
to French thought and Hume himself tended to adopt a French
worldview and temperament. Desire in this milieu meant a very
general idea termed "the passions," and this general interest was
distinct from the contemporary idea of "passionate" now equated
with "romantic." Love was a central topic again in the subsequent
movement of
Romanticism, which focused
on such things as absorption in nature and the
absolute, as well as
platonic and unrequited love in German philosophy
and literature.
Philosophers and authors interested in the nature of love, which
may not have been mentioned in this article are
Jane Austen,
Stendhal,
Schopenhauer,
George Meredith,
Proust,
D. H. Lawrence,
Freud,
Sartre,
de Beauvoir,
Hemingway,
Henry
Miller,
Deleuze and
Alan Soble.
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 setOn the
fair daughter of rich Capulet:As mine on hers, so hers is set on
mine;And all combined, save what thou must combineBy holy marriage:
when and where and howWe 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.
While Buddha taught a philosophy of
compassion and love, still in his
philosophy of anatman or non-self spiritual
appearances are of a piece with the world and essentially empty.
The contradiction between compassion and anatman seems to be a part
of Buddhism. In that case a seemingly negative insight can result
in very different overall views, for example if one compares Buddha
and Shakespeare with Friedrich
Nietzsche.
Kierkegaard also addressed these ideas in works such as
Either/Or and Stages on Life's Way.
Psychology
Many theorists attempt to analyze the process of romantic
love.
Helen Fisher
Anthropologist Helen Fisher, Ph.D., in her book “Why We Love,” uses
brain scans to show that love is the product of a chemical reaction
in the brain. Norepinephrine and
dopamine, among other chemicals, are
responsible for excitement and bliss in humans as well as non-human
animals.
Fisher concludes that these reactions have a genetic basis, and
therefore love is a natural drive as powerful as hunger.
John Townsend
In his book “What Women Want, What Men Want,” , anthropologist John
Townsend takes the genetic basis of love one step further by
identifying how the sexes are different in their
predispositions.
Townsend's compilation of various research projects concludes that
men are susceptible to youth and beauty, whereas women are
susceptible to status and security. These differences are part of a
natural selection process where males seek many healthy women of
childbearing age which will mother offspring, whereas women seek
men who are willing and able to take care of them and their
children.
Karen Horney
Other researchers have focused on opposing forces in human
love.
Psychologist Karen Horney, M.D., in her article “The Problem of the
Monogamous Ideal,” indicates that the overestimation of love leads
to disillusionment; the desire to possess the partner results in
the partner wanting to escape; and the taboos against sex result in
non-fulfillment. Disillusionment plus the desire to escape plus
non-fulfillment result in a secret hostility, which causes the
other partner to feel alienated. Secret hostility in one and secret
alienation in the other cause the partners to secretly hate each
other. This secret hate often leads one or the other or both to
seek love objects outside the marriage or relationship.
Harold Bessell
Psychologist Harold Bessell, Ph.D, in his book “The Love Test,”
reconciles the opposing forces noted by the above researchers and
shows that there are two factors that determine the quality of a
relationship.
Bessell proposes that people are drawn together by a force which he
calls “romantic attraction,” which is a combination of genetic and
cultural factors. This force may be weak or strong and may be felt
to different degrees by each of the two love partners. The other
factor is “emotional maturity,” which is the degree to which a
person is capable of providing good treatment in a love
relationship. It can thus be said that an immature person is more
likely to overestimate love, become disillusioned, and have an
affair whereas a mature person is more likely to see the
relationship in realistic terms and act constructively to work out
problems.
Lisa Diamond
Romantic love in the abstract sense of the term, is traditionally
referred to as involving a mix of emotional and sexual desire for
another as a person. However, Lisa Diamond,
a University of
Utah
psychology professor,
proposes that sexual desire and romantic love are functionally
independent and that romantic love is not intrinsically oriented to
same-gender or other-gender partners. She also proposes that
the links between love and desire are bidirectional as opposed to
unilateral. Furthermore, Diamond does not state that one's sex has
priority over another sex (a male or female) in romantic love
because her theory suggests it is as possible for someone who is
homosexual to fall in love with someone
of the opposite gender as for someone who is heterosexual to fall in love with someone of
the same gender.
University research
Research by the University of Pavia suggests that romantic love
lasts for about a year, and then it is replaced by a more stable
form of love called companionate love. In companionate love,
changes occur from the early stage of love to when the relationship
becomes more established and romantic feelings seem to end. However
research by the Stony Brook University in New York suggests that
some couples keep romantic feelings alive for much longer.
Value
Even though there often appears to be traces of romance and love
being intertwined in various cultures and societies throughout
history, Gary Zukav, best selling author
of Seat of the Soul and Soul Stories, views romantic love as being
an illusion, stating that the concept of romantic love can never be
truly fulfilling. He states that "Romance is your desire to make
yourself complete through another person rather than through your
own inner work.", thus isolating the idea of romance from the
concept of "true love." His argument is that "real love" is more
beneficial than romantic involvement alone.
Romantic love may then be a sexual love that
attempts to transcend needs driven by physical appearances,
lust, or material and social gain. This
transcending ultimately implies not just that personality is more
essential and a view that might appear without much regard to
character. Rather, romance tends to strive to see, or suppose it
can see, personality as attractive in a fundamentally higher
sense.
In religion
In some religions, all forms of love and art may be regarded as
indirectly seeking God - therefore adding to a
relationship with God - whereas at the same time, such lesser
objects of love are sometimes regarded as distinct from God and an
obstacle in the path of spirituality.
Many theologians and philosophers debate this religious notion
especially in continental philosophy, existentialism, as well as in analytic
philosophy - in views such as emotivism.
Things lesser than personality, however, as well as the practical
aspects of personality, always play a role in romance's arousal and
justification.
Tragedy and other social issues
The "tragic" contradiction between romance and society is most
forcibly portrayed in literature, in Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, in Flaubert's Madame Bovary, and William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. The female
protagonists in such stories are driven to suicide as if dying for
a cause of freedom from various oppressions of marriage.
Even after sexual revolutions, on the other hand, to the extent
that it does not lead to procreation (or child-rearing, as it also
might exist in same-sex marriage),
romance remains peripheral though it may have virtues in the relief
of stress, as a source of
inspiration or adventure, or in development and the strengthening
of certain social relations. It is difficult to imagine the tragic
heroines, however, as having such practical considerations in
mind.
Romance can also be tragic in its conflict with society. The
Tolstoy family focuses on the romantic
limitations of marriage, and Anna
Karenina prefers death to being married to her fiancée.
Furthermore, in the speech about marriage that is given in
Kierkegaard's Either/Or,
Kierkegaard attempts to show that it is because marriage is lacking
in passion fundamentally, that the nature of marriage, unlike
romance, is explainable by a man who has experience of neither
marriage nor love.
Reciprocity of the sexes appears in the ancient world primarily in
myth where it is in fact often the subject of tragedy, for example
in the myths of Theseus and Atalanta. Noteworthy female freedom or power was an
exception rather than the rule, though this is a matter of
speculation and debate.
At the same time Christianity has had another effect on romance, by
asserting the spirituality of marriage.
Common associated practices
A Vietnamese romantic kiss
Common practices of romance may include:
See also
References
Further reading
- Kierkegaard, Søren. Stages on Life's Way. Transl.
Walter Lowrie, D.D. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1940.
- Levi-Strauss, Claude. Structural Anthropology. London:
Allen Lane, 1968; New York: Penguin Books, 1994. Structural
Anthropology. (volume 2) London: Allen Lane, 1977; New York:
Peregrine Books 1976.
- Nietzsche, Friedrich. Human, All Too Human. Transl.
R.J. Hollingdale. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2nd Edition,
1996.
- Wiseman, Boris. Introducing Levi-Strauss. New York:
Totem Books, 1998.
- Denis de Rougemont, Love in the Western World.
Pantheon Books, 1956.
- Francesco Alberoni,
Falling in love, New York, Random House, 1983.
- Brad Hayden, "falling in love" Canada, Random place, 2007 Made
possible by Cora-lee Reid.
- de Munck, Victor, and Andrey Korotayev. Sexual Equality and Romantic Love: A Reanalysis of
Rosenblatt's Study on the Function of Romantic Love //
Cross-Cultural Research 33 (1999): 265–277.
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