History 160D / Cultural Anthropology 160D

The History of Romantic Love^{ALP, CCI, EI, W}

This is a draft version of 29 October 2007, subject to change.

Spring 2008

Meetings: MW, 10:05 - 10:55 am, Room: TBA (Friday discussion sessions, 10:05 - 10:55 am)

Instructor: William M. Reddy

216A Carr Bldg., 684-2343

wmr@duke.edu

www.duke.edu/~wmr

This course examines the development of a "heroic" form of romantic love in Europe in the twelfth century, and traces its transformations through the subsequent centuries of Western history. Two nonwestern traditions are compared, to make clear what is unique about Western practices. Students will be asked to think critically about the cultural forms that love has taken in these various contexts, and to examine the divergent answers given, over the ages, to questions such as: Is love good or bad, virtuous or self-indulgent? Does true love justify adultery? Does love inevitably fade? Is love impossible in marriage, or the proper basis of marriage?

Class discussions. Lecture and reading materials will be discussed each week; participation in discussion will count for 20% of the course grade. Reading assignments run approximately 60 to 120 pages per week, and it is important to complete them before the Friday discussion. Assigned films are available in Lilly Library.

Papers. Students will develop and defend their own views on various aspects of the history of romantic love in three brief papers. Each paper will be worth 20% of the course grade. The first paper will examine the question covered in the first two weeks of class: Why was romantic love invented in the twelfth century? The second and third papers will be on a topic selected from a list available on the course web site. Students will formulate a question about that topic and critically examine answers available in readings selected for each topic. (Students may develop their own paper topics as well, if they prefer.) The selection of topic, and formulation of a guiding question, must be completed approximately ten days before the paper is due. Any paper may be rewritten, to improve the grade, within two weeks of the date one receives it back. Students must rewrite at least two papers (except when grades of A - or better are received).

Final examination. A take-home final examination will count for 20% of the course grade. Students will select from a list of essay questions, and will have twenty-four hours to prepare answers.

Books available for purchase in the Textbook Store:

(Students are not required to purchase these books, although all contain substantial reading assignments. Most will also be available on reserve in Lilly Library.)

Chrétien de Troyes, Lancelot or the Knight of the Cart, translated by Ruth Harwood Cline (Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 1990) $19.95

Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji, Abridged Edition, translated by Edward G. Seidensticker (New York: Knopf, 1990) $14.95

Howard Hibbett, The Floating World in Japanese Fiction (Boston: Tuttle Publishing, 1975) $14.95

Ihara Saikaku, Five Women Who Loved Love, translated by William Theodore de Bary (Boston: Tuttle Publishing, [1685] 1956) $12.95

Jaffe, Irma B., and Gernando Colombardo, Shining Eyes, Cruel Fortune: The Lives and Loves of Italian Renaissance Women Poets (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002) $22.50

Mary Wortley Montagu, Selected Letters (London: Penguin, 1997) $18.00

Samuel Richardson, Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (London: Penguin, [1740] 1980) $10.00

Nancy B. Reich, Clara Schumann: The Artist and the Woman (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985) $22.95

Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, translated by James Strachey (New York: Norton, 1989) $11.95

Nancy Milford, Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St Vincent Millay (New York: Random House, 2002) $14.95

OUTLINE

*Readings marked by an asterisk are available on the course website. All other readings will be available on reserve in Lilly Library.

I. Romantic Love in the Middle Ages

Wednesday, 9 January. Introduction to the course

Friday, 11 January. Discussion

Reading: Three songs by William IX of Aquitaine*

Monday, 14 January. The invention of romantic love.

Wednesday, 16 January. The code of chivalry.

Friday, 18 January. Discussion

Readings: Jane Martindale, " 'His Special Friend'? The Settlement of Disputes and Political Power in the Kingdom of the French (Tenth to Mid-Twelfth Century)," Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., 5(1995):21-57*;

Chrétien de Troyes, Lancelot or the Knight of the Cart, translated by Ruth Harwood Cline (Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 1990), 1-140.

II. Love in the ancient world

[Monday, 21 January. Martin Luther King, Jr., Day]

Wednesday, 23 January. Why love in the ancient world was not heroic.

Friday, 25 January. Discussion

Readings: Plato, Symposium, from The Symposium and the Phaedrus: Plato's Erotic Dialogues, translated by William S. Cobb (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1993), 28-32, 39-49. (Available on www.netlibrary.com .)

Plutarch, Life of Mark Antony, in Roman Lives, translated by Robin Waterfield (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 360-431. (Available on www.netlibrary.com .)

[Friday, 25 January. First paper due. 4-6 pp. in length. Topic: Why was romantic love invented in the twelfth century?]

III. The Role of love in Hindu temple worship

Monday, 28 January. Puri and the Gitagovinda.

Wednesday, 30 January. The place of sexuality in Hindu theological ideas.

Friday, 1 February. Discussion

Readings: Lee Siegel, Sacred and Profane Dimensions of Love in Indian Traditions as Exemplified in the Gitagovinda of Jayadeva (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 20-23, 43-88, 240-56, 276-286;

Marglin, Frédérique Apffel, "Refining the Body: Transformative Emotion in Ritual Dance," in Owen M. Lynch, ed., Divine Passions: The Social Construction of Emotion in India (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1990), pp. 212-236.*

Monday, 4 February. British incomprehension of Hindu sexuality.

Wednesday, 6 February. From temple worship to Bollywood films

Friday, 8 February. Discussion

Readings: Kunal M. Parker, " 'A Corporation of Superior Prostitutes': Anglo-Indian Legal Conceptions of Temple Dancing Girls, 1800-1914," Modern Asian Studies 32(1998):559-633*;

Steve Derné, Culture in Action: Family Life, Emotion, and Male Dominance in Banaras, India (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1995), 83-103. (Available on www.netlibrary.com )

IV. The Buddhist-tinged love of Heian and Tokugawa Japan

Monday, 11 February. The Imperial Court in the Heian period.

Wednesday, 13 February. Genji's childlike persona.

Friday, 15 February. Discussion

Readings: Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji, Abridged Edition, translated by Edward G. Seidensticker (New York: Knopf, 1990), 3-106 (In the unabridged edition on reserve, read chapters 1, 4, 5, 7)

Monday, 18 February. The "floating world" of Tokugawa cities

Wednesday, 20 February. Sexuality and the status of women in Tokugawa society and today

Friday, 22 February. Topic selections due for second paper.

Friday, 22 February. Discussion

Readings: Howard Hibbett, The Floating World in Japanese Fiction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959), selected pages;

Howard Hibbett, The Floating World in Japanese Fiction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959; Boston: Tuttle Publishing, 1975), 3-50, 154-218

Sheldon Garon, "The World's Oldest Debate? Prostitution in Imperial Japan, 1900-1945," American Historical Review 98(1993):710-732*

V. Europe: How Romantic Love Survived the Decline of Chivalry (1400-1600)

Monday, 25 February. The Renaissance, the Reformation, and the end of chivalry.

Wednesday, 27 February. Renaissance theories of love, Italian love poets of the Renaissance

Friday, 29 February. Discussion

Readings: Carol Kidwell, Pietro Bembo: Lover, Linguist, Cardinal (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2004), sections on Gli Asolani and on his relationship with Lucrezia Borgia

T. Anthony Perry, Erotic Spirituality: The Integrative Tradition from Leone Ebreo to John Donne (University, Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1980), 10-34

Irma B. Jaffe and Gernando Colombardo, Shining Eyes, Cruel Fortune: The Lives and Loves of Italian Renaissance Women Poets (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002), 71-105 (Tullia d'Aragona), 311-338 (Tarquinia Molza)

Monday, 3 March. Second Paper Due, 5-10 pages in length, on your pre-approved topic.

Monday, 3 March. French and English love poets of the Renaissance.

Wednesday, 5 March. The question of gallantry.

Friday, 7 March. Discussion

Readings: T. Anthony Perry, Erotic Spirituality: The Integrative Tradition from Leone Ebreo to John Donne (University, Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1980), 35-66, 89-98 [check exact pp at office]

John Donne, "The Exstasie."

Brantôme, Gallant Ladies (ca. 1580), selections from 1933 translation.

[8-16 March. Spring Break]

VI. How Romantic Love Changed from Vice to Virtue (1600-1800)

Monday, 17 March. The campaign against gallantry.

Wednesday, 19 March. Rebels on principle: Dorothy Osborne and Mary Wortley Montagu

Friday, 21 March. Discussion

Joan DeJean, Tender Geographies: Women and the Origins of the Novel in France (New York, 1991), 47-98 [check exact pp at office]

Dorothy Osborne, The Letters of Dorothy Osborne to William Temple, edited by G. C. Moore Smith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, [1652-54] 1928), the letters numbered: 5-17, 26-28, 43-45, 47-48, 53-54

Mary Wortley Montagu, Selected Letters (London: Penguin, 1997)

Monday, 24 March. Sentiment as virtue in the Eighteenth Century

Wednesday, 26 March. Love and the excesses of sentiment

Friday, 28 March. Topic selections due for third paper

Friday, 28 March. Discussion

Readings: Samuel Richardson, Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (London: Penguin, [1740] 1980), 31, 43-118, 200-320

VII. The rise of the modern diagnostic view: Love as sexual desire in disguise

Monday, 31 March. The flourishing of romantic love in the nineteenth century.

Wednesday, 2 April. The crisis of the family and the rise of sexology (1870-1914)

Friday, 4 April. Discussion

Nancy B. Reich, Clara Schumann: The Artist and the Woman (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985), 58-134

Rudolph Binion, "Fiction as Social Fantasy: Europe's Domestic Crisis, 1879-1914," Journal of Social History 27(1994):679-699*

Monday, 7 April. Third paper due, 5-10 pages in length, on your pre-approved topic

Monday, 7 April. Freud's approach to love

Wednesday, 9 April. Freudianism and feminism in the life of Edna St. Vincent Millay

Friday, 11 April. Discussion

Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents

Milford, 143-244

View: The Blue Angel (1930)

The Philadelphia Story (1940)

Monday 14 April. Sexual compatibility: The new marital ideal (1920-1960)

Wednesday, 16 April. The sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s

Friday, 18 April. Discussion

Dagmar Herzog, "'Pleasure, Sex, and Politics Belong Together': Post-Holocaust Memory and the Sexual Revolution in West Germany," Critical Inquiry 24(1998):393-444

Dagmar Herzog, "Sexuality in the Postwar West," Journal of Modern History 78 (March 2006): 144 - 171.

View: The Graduate (1967)

Annie Hall (1977)

Monday, 21 April. Romantic love makes a come back, 1980-present

Wednesday, 23 April. The end of sexology?

View: Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994)

Amélie (2001)