Enduring love and the curious gift of Eleanor of Aquitaine

I was looking at a course William Reddy teaches on the History of Romantic Love at Duke University in North Carolina.

This caught the eye:

"Before the twelfth century, in Europe, love between men and women was not regarded as heroic; it was instead considered a sign of weakness, the preoccupation of a person without character. Why this change? Since the twelfth century, lovers have been consistently considered heroic in Western countries. The plot of the story of Lancelot and Guinevere written about 1170 and the plot of the famous movie Casablanca (1942)--perhaps the most admired Hollywood film of all time--are virtually the same."

It should be noted that the romantic love of the twelfth century mostly revolved around the unconsumated love of a man and a married woman and is somewhat different to our modern notion of Romantic love but the relationship is clear. However, it did appear a genuine innovation in European thought and idea that two souls united in physical and emotional union could be an elevated form of existence.

Though it may have evolved since those courtly days, Romantic love has been an enduring feature both in its celebration and its supression in the intervening centuries. This obviously begs a few questions, not least:

Why it should have been then and not before that such a feeling arose, given its hold upon Western society suggests that it speaks to (or perhaps created) a very powerful need within us?

Why has it had such a powerful grip on Western imagination and identity?

Why has this not appeared with such force in other cultures?

For those that didn't know - there are roots to the ideas and songs of those troubadours wandering round southern France who entertained Eleanor of Aquitaine and gave birth to Romantic love. From the Greeks philosophers like Socrates and Plato, Roman writers such as Ovid to Islamic lyric poetry (many strands of which also contained some homosexual elements) was the notion born.

So why did it arise then and not before? Perhaps part of the answer lied in the Christian notion that divine love was the primary form of expression of love and that sexuality, especially female sexuality which was associated with paganism was not to be celebrated. Christ took no bride according to the orthodox account and those considered most religious were celibate monks, priests and nuns, the latter of whom were and in some ways still are considered brides of Christ. That does not create a climate conducive to encouraging a taboo breaking spritually blessed union between man and woman.

Why then did it not arise before Christianity? The axial sages and prophets (Buddha, Confucius, Lao Tse, the Judaic prophets) had already forced much of the world to recognise that compassion and individual morality were crucial to our relationship with the world and those around us, and even the teachings of Jesus and Mohammed were developments upon these themes rather than entirely new ideas. In other words we had the mental, emotional and philosphical potential to create Romantic love before. We just didn't.

This makes me wonder, and it is only speculation upon my part - more learned readers feel free to correct - that the social fabrics of those societies was enough to either not feel the need or actively prohibit its development.

Was it only the gap left by lords, knights and others fighting in the Crusades that gave the space for their ladies to encourage such ideas instead of the more usual litanies of battle and male valour. Did this space (perhaps not unlike the political strides made by women during the two World Wars) allow women to encourage the troubadours in their creation of something to the benefit of men and women?

As strange as it may seem, could it not be down to the curious fortune of Eleanor of Aquitaine's encouragement of such tales when she was mistress of the household without a father or husband to do the medieval equivalent of hogging the remote control that night? And having done so, to persuade the returned Duke, William IX, that he too might enjoy their equivalent of a rom-com instead of a war film?

Why has Romantic love held such a grip on the Western imagination? A tricky one this and so again I am forced to speculate. (a familiar problem as regular readers know)

Our concept of the soul (and the ego?) is unusual in global mythology and perhaps romantic love tapped into those notions to create an unusually powerful attraction between the individuals of the time and the concept of Romantic love, when perhaps other societies had stronger notions of social bonds that were less dynamic and therefore less receptive to such a potentially disruptive influence such as a love that breaks marital bonds and involves individual choice over group benefit and stability.

Perhaps as I mentioned above, the social dislocation caused by wars such as the Crusades allowed a freedom to innovate that might not otherwise have been possible, and that once this had been done, men recognised the benefit of this to themselves, speaking as it did to their ego.

And held fast it has upon the imagination and identity of the West. Like the American Dream, of a better material life being yours for the taking if you are prepared to strive for it, so it is with romantic love. A better life for one's soul if one falls in love. It is, if one excuses the pun, a seductive notion.

I am very conscious these ideas reflect the rise of romantic love within a certain class of people in medieval times and not the ordinary peasant folk who lived then too, so all thoughts on their conceptions of love at such times most welcome. I wrote about some of those from a later time here.

It also begs the question are we the better for romantic love, and that i think is another rich vein for another post.

Emotional narrative

I've had this post on draft for a few weeks and spoken about this topic on several occasions when tipsy in hostelries up and down the land. And then some scientists from Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh go and prove my point for me. (ok it's not really my point, but I would have looked a wee bit prescient writing about it and basked in the smugness)

Anyway the study they were publishing claims that romantic comedies create unrealistic expectations in relationships and contribute to their failure.

On a wider level, films and other media influence our emotional lives. And arguably more than we realise. All stories do as we like our lives to have structure and the narrative of stories does that for us. We can identify with characters, respond to their situations and then relate it to our own lives.

The report cites the notion of a belief in destiny and fate as creating unnecessary pressures on relationships in trying to make them 'perfect'.

One of the points I always used to raise was the notion of 'closure' at the ending of a relationship, as in "I need closure on this."

What rot! Life goes on somewhat relentlessly and does not always provide closure. People are not two dimensional fictional characters and despite artistic and poetic truths existing in literature, our lives are not like some Dickensian plot neatly tied together at the end.

Our emotions are held to ransom by false narratives and we create much unhappiness in these dishonesties.


(for the record i have been known to enjoy the odd rom com and witnesses have noticed a lump in my throat at the end of even the most saccharine guff)

a brief story of love, and its lack

Browsing through t'internet i came across this about love and marriage through the ages:

"1690s U.S.: Virginia wasn't always for lovers—Passionate love between husband and wife is considered unseemly: One Virginia colonist describes a woman he knows as "more fond of her husband perhaps than the politeness of the day allows." Protestant ministers warn spouses against loving each other too much, or using endearing nicknames that will undermine husbandly authority."

It is accepted amongst historians that love was not always the arbiter of marriage that we so treasure in the West. But what of the future of love and marriage? Will they be constant and faithful companions?

In two hundred years time surely our conceptions of such things will have changed again? It is surely vanity and false pride to suggest we have alighted upon the sole eternal solution that will hold a relationship through truth and time. Given the fraught nature of modern marriage and relationships, this surely reinforces the notion that much will change still further... Marriage has lived throughout the ages by its very adaptability so surely it will adapt further.

I should add, in case anyone thinks i am damning or denying the power of true love, that is not my intention. My personal belief in the coruscating power of love remains, but history marches on relentlessly....

Lanark and the price of love

For some reason my mind keeps coming back to this quote from one of my favourite books, 'Lanark' by Alasdair Gray.

"The Thaw [the main character] narrative shows a man dying because he is bad at loving. It is enclosed by [Lanark's] narrative which shows civilization collapsing for the same reason"

Can a society and a civilisation collapse because of an inability to love? If so, then where is our history of public love that can show us where we lost it and how we might bring it back? Or even create it for the first time in our human story?

I believe it can and is happening in all capitalist societies, Western or Eastern, Northern or Southern. There is love out there in abundance, certainly, but it is not truly pervasive throughout the fabric of our society. The monotheistic revolution of the axial age has failed.

Where is the love in the market? A market requires profit, and without an overarching structure to regulate that market, then a market will always maximise profit above all else. In this world love is an extravagance unnecessary for business and is not part of that regulation.

Love is given freely and cannot be sold. In a world of finite resources, the market will always devour everything and will not give freely. It will not love.

Even public services are bound now by a loveless market and there are no economic quantifiers that tell us of the benefit or profit in giving love. Can schools be graded by how much love they give?

Our economic system is now facing up to including carbon and its emissions into its equations to understand and deal with climate change, and rightly so. But if overconsumption is part of the problem, can the economics of a carbon conscious market adapt in time? Oil becomes cheap again and so development into green energy slows again.

It may sound hopelessly drippy, but can an economy exist sustainably without love? Love does not exist in isolation but it seems more necessary than ever as our planet warms and we as a species harm our own children's futures.

But this is where a history of the emotions can help. To improve our understanding of ourselves and the depth of our natures and the actions that come out of those natures, we can include it in the account of our nature and make sure we profit from its addition, not suffer from its loss.

obstacles to love?

Watching the tail end of Alan Yentob's 'Imagine' documentary strand, this time on the development of the love story. (If ever there was a case of the self indulgence of an exec then it's this strand. But at least it poses some fun questions now and then).

In it, one of the contributors asked the question 'what are the impediments to love in western civilisation these days?' Adultery is in many ways normalised, and class is supposedly not the barrier it once was - though as Kate Fox points out in her book ' the English' that the English marry less outside of their class these days than they used to 30 years ago.

However, despite Fox's caveat, the point being reasonably made was that none of the barriers to love's consummation seem insurmountable these days and therefore without conflict give no truly powerful and transcendent dynamic to a contemporary love story. In a love story we need a conflict to exist to then to be resolved so love can be seen to triumph.

Leaving aside literary arguments, I couldn't help but wonder. Has love really won, has it truly triumphed o'er all obstacles? If this is so then why does not western society bask in the warmth of that joyous victory where love reigns and its gentle allies compassion, respect and tolerance sit together before a round table of wisdom?

Clearly love has not won out here in the real world. Which means there is a disconnect between what is written and what is.

Rather than a victory for love, I believe we have seen the triumph of desire, of an individualism lauded in philosophy and made beautiful in art reduced to an infantilism of epic proportions in behaviour, and an overwhelming gratification of the senses rendering us senseless.

We have taken our sense of the individual and tied it to desire, leaving us tied in turn by desire as our obsession with its fulfillment consumes ourselves, ignoring the fact that the nature of desire is ephemeral and condemns us to a selfish repetition that is a ugly parody of love.

snapshot of online emotions

have you seen this before?

A site that captures the feelings written about on the web . 'We feel fine' was conceived and created by Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar. want to know which are the most common emotions? where is the saddest place online? do people online feel more lonely than loved?

ok so this was site was oringinally done two years ago, but i never said i was cutting edge...

emotions in history

Have you ever wondered about how people felt one thousand years ago, struggling for survival in the dark ages, gnawed at by poverty, disease, and strife? Did they feel lonely? According to Theodore Zeldin in his 'An Intimate History of Humanity', people in India developed a way of coping with loneliness that was akin to the way doctors sometimes treat disease. It was to inoculate themselves against the problem with a deadened form of loneliness - they (although this was sadly only for the men at that time) went on retreat for three months. The enforced isolation faced down the spectre of loneliness and gave people the strength to not be so afraid of an emotion that so troubles us today.

Would it serve any purpose to do something like this for both young men and women today?