1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910452718403321

Autore

Reddy William M

Titolo

The making of romantic love [[electronic resource] ] : longing and sexuality in Europe, South Asia, and Japan, 900-1200 CE / / William M. Reddy

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Chicago ; ; London, : University of Chicago Press, 2012

ISBN

1-282-16646-8

9786613809537

0-226-70628-1

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (450 p.)

Collana

Chicago studies in practices of meaning

Disciplina

808.8/03543

Soggetti

Courtly love in literature

Courtly love

Troubadours

Love - Europe

Love - South Asia

Love - Japan

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references.

Nota di contenuto

The emergence of courtly love in Europe -- Aristocratic speech, the Gregorian reform, and the first troubadour -- Trobairitz and troubadours and the shadow religion -- Narratives of true love and twelfth-century common sense -- Points of comparison -- The Bhakti troubadour: Vaishnavism in twelfth-century Bengal and Orissa -- Elegance and compassion in Heian Japan.

Sommario/riassunto

In the twelfth century, the Catholic Church attempted a thoroughgoing reform of marriage and sexual behavior aimed at eradicating sexual desire from Christian lives. Seeking a refuge from the very serious condemnations of the Church and relying on a courtly culture that was already preoccupied with honor and secrecy, European poets, romance writers, and lovers devised a vision of love as something quite different from desire. Romantic love was thus born as a movement of covert



resistance. In The Making of Romantic Love: Longing and Sexuality in Europe, South Asia, and Japan, William M. Reddy illuminates the birth of a cultural movement that managed to regulate selfish desire and render it innocent-or innocent enough. Reddy strikes out from this historical moment on an international exploration of love, contrasting the medieval development of romantic love in Europe with contemporaneous eastern traditions in Bengal and Orissa, and in Heian Japan from 900-1200 CE, where one finds no trace of an opposition between love and desire. In this comparative framework, Reddy tells an appealing tale about the rise and fall of various practices of longing, underscoring the uniqueness of the European concept of sexual desire.