Love: A History in Five Fantasies

by Barbara H. Rosenwein

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 judgments. 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 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.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Psychology, Romance

200 pages, Hardcover

Published March 7, 2022

About the author

Prof. Barbara Rosenwein was the Humanitas Visiting Professor in Historiography at the University of Oxford for the year 2014-2015.

Barbara H. Rosenwein (Ph.D. (1974), B.A. (1966), University of Chicago) is a professor at Loyola University Chicago. An internationally renowned historian, she has been a guest professor at the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France; the École Normale Supérieure, Paris, France; the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, and most recently at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Since 2009, Rosenwein has been an affiliated research scholar at the Centre for the History of the Emotions at Queen Mary University in London. She was a scholar in residence at the American Academy in Rome in 2001-2002 and was elected Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America in 2003.

Reviews

[Victoria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Me gustó el uso de estos arquetipos del amor para explorar su evolución a lo largo del tiempo, utilizándolos como herramientas para examinar las complejidades del amor humano.

"(...) history itself offers up fantasies. They change with the times, as does their relevance and the experiences they compass; and yet, despite all that, they continue to glow and beckon. Knowing their contexts and their vagaries helps us put them in perspective and free us from their tyranny."

[Weather Lenczewski · Rating 4 out of 5]

I miss writing essays so here are my mini essays on each chapter!!

- Sameness: I think humans seek like mindedness in the Penelope/Odysseus way of sharing a combined home and combined want for peace but I also think marriage has moved past that and now seeking likemindedness in personality is more important than just sameness in class and mutually beneficial household arrangements. I will say I am a bit soft on the idea of twin flames and soulmates, but not in the idea of “finding your other half”, more in the idea of “finding your likeness.” Love the quote that friendship “is a double life: to be a friend is to be [oneself] twice (pg. 33, La Boétie).” I think this is true in platonic and romantic partnerships. Two of the same, not two halves.

- Transcendence: I agree more with modern interpretations of love as a “transcendent force” in that I think it’s more of a grounding force that allows for transcendence in the personal sphere, love doesn’t lift you to the heavens, love lifts you so you can lift yourself. I can see the argument for love as transcendence when it comes to paternal love since it give your life a new purpose, whereas romantic love should better the life you already live, not create a whole new life. I agree with the idea of love as a transcendent force in that it is lasting and that separation in time, place, and death are all unimportant to love.

- Obligation: Grecian and Christian love both put the power into the hands of men and women are expected to oblige to their wants and wills, but obligation in love shouldn’t be submission but sacrifice and the desire to give to a partner. Obligation is a duty to please, not a command to appease. Along with the “obligation” of affection, comes the “obligation” of communicating. Now that marriage itself isn’t an obligation, the ability to pick a partner requires lovers to learn about each other, god forbid you form a bad union. Thinking about that quote “If we want the rewards of being loved, we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known (Tim Kreider).”

- Obsession: “Staying inside the idea of love.” Love as obsession is a sickness of the soul. This obsession is only cured by honor and self discipline. Honestly, they got something right here. Love is about giving yourself to someone else, the only solution to love is to take yourself back. Lucretius sounds like every man nowadays bruh but like it’s okay to be vulnerable and be in love. Is obsessive love embarrassing and something to cure or romantic and something to be nurtured? Is the only deciding factor whether or not that love is requited? I think the capability to love so hard is admirable. Unfortunately, it seems like men see it as a flaw and women see it as a positive trait. I think being on the other side of that love is hard, whether you feel the same or not. You either have to shut down that kind of love or try to match it. Two people have to love each other in the same way for it to work. I’ve never thought about how kneeling during proposals comes from vassalage but like duh. Love is dedication and service, please see: love is obligation. Is serviceable love unequal? A true and noble heart will love but at what cost? Is all consuming love healthy/compatible with life?

- Insatiability: Obsessive love has one focus, insatiable love is lust/love with no specific target. Insatiable love sees love as pleasure, so any ounce of pain in a romantic pursuit should reason to end it and find a new one. “Insatiable” love, which acts more like lust, is the child of need (biological need for copulation and connection) and resourcefulness (doing whatever you can to to get what you want). This love is not “holy” or “human”, but something in between. “Lust” was created by the church to denigrate sexual relationships. Bodily need is not a sin, insatiable love isn’t wrong. Love from the body, not from the soul. Can you truly “love (not “lust)” more than one person at the same time? Does a king “love (not “lust”)” all of his mistresses? Distinctions between animal sex, love sex and true love, this just reminds me of that god awful scene in Downsizing. Men these days acting like they Valmont!! Male insatiability is seen as “striving” and admirable, where female insatiability is slutty. For men, lust is a virtue. Is “love” something to focus on and nurture with one person or is love something to hoard and get while you still can? Some can’t ignore the lure of “next.” Next is a fantasy. Lifelong love isn’t the fantasy, a person is the fantasy. Insatiable love is fantasy and allure.

- Concluding thoughts: Love is real but it is expressed in fantasies. Love is an umbrella term for the many ways people connect with each other, romantically, sexually, briefly, emotionally, etc. People can love different people in different ways and the same people in different ways. The book is not asking “what is love?” but “what has love been?” and “what is love now?” Love as we know it has existed forever but its functions and expressions have expanded its meaning. Love stories are continuous but how that love is described and experienced is continuously shifting. There is no one way to love, and locking yourself into believing in only one of the many fantasies of love that exists doesn’t mean you figured love out. It is not meant to be understood, only experienced.

[emma rowan · Rating 4 out of 5]

loved this book though it could’ve been fruitier 🤷🏼‍♀️ i’m wanting a sequel from her with a more modern history, 20th century and on, of love

[Maha Taha · Rating 4 out of 5]

قد نتمنَّى لو كان بوسعنا أن نكتشف جوهر الحب “الحقيقي”. لكنَّ الحب لا يعمل بهذه الطريقة؛ فهو مزيج من الخبرة والقصص والمشاعر التي نتعرّض لها على مرِّ الزمن والتي تتشابك مع تصوّرات أخرى. وتزعم الكاتبة انها من خلال فهم تاريخ الكيفية التي أحببنا بها قد نتمكّن من التعامل بشكل أفضل مع تجاربنا المضطربة وربَّما كتابة سيناريوهاتنا الخاصة.

[irezzzzzzzzzzzz · Rating 4 out of 5]

por si estáis obsesionados por entender el Amor, como aquí una servidora: este libro es un repaso por cinco versiones (“fantasías”) del amor (la afinidad, la trascendencia, la obligación, la obsesión y la insaciabilidad) a lo largo de la Historia

me ha gustado mucho!!!!

[Zahraa Hussin. · Rating 3 out of 5]

في حُب الحديث عن الحب، وتفكيك أو بالأحرىٰ محاولات (محكومة أبداً بالنقصان) تفكيك ذاك اللغز الأكبر.