Romance (love)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Romantic love is a form of love that is often regarded as different from mere needs driven by sexual desire, or lust. Romantic love generally involves a mix of emotional and sexual desire, as opposed to Platonic love. There is often, initially, more emphasis on the emotions than on physical pleasure.
Properties of romantic love purported by Western culture include these:
- It cannot be easily controlled.
- It is not overtly (initially at least) predicated on a desire for sex as a physical act.
- If requited, it may be the basis for lifelong commitment.
Romance is a general term that refers to an intimate and often sexual relationship between two people.
It is an exaggerated or decorated expression of love. It also refers to a feeling of excitement associated with love. Historically the term romance did not necessarily imply love relationships, but rather was seen as an artistic expression of one's innermost desires; sometimes including love, sometimes not. Romance is still sometimes viewed as an expressionistic, or artful form, but within the context of "romantic love" relationships it usually implies an expression of one's love, or one's deep emotional desires to connect with another person. "Romance" in this sense can therefore be defined as attachment, fascination, or enthusiasm for something or someone, in literature similar exaggerated narration is called romance (see Romanticism and Romance novel).
Historical definition of romantic love
The concept of romantic love was popularized in Western culture by the game of courtly love. Troubadours in the Middle Ages engaged in (usually extramarital) trysts with women as a game created for fun - and not for marriage. Since at the time marriage had little to do with love, courtly love was a way for people to express the love not found in their marriage. "Lovers" in the context of courtly love did not refer to sex, but rather the act of emotional loving. These "lovers" had short trysts in secret, which 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) written in the 12th century 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".
Historians believe that the actual English word "romance" developed from a vernacular dialect within the French language, meaning "verse narritve", referring to the style of speech and writing, and artistic talents within elite classes. The word was originally an adverb of sorts, which was of the Latin origin "Romanicus", meaning "of the Roman style", "like the Romans" (see Roman.) 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", or the equivalent thereof also has 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."
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 the English phrase "romantic love" (i.e "loving like the Romans do".) But the precise origins of such a connection are unknown. 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 at one point in time or another.
See also
- Love
- Biological Attraction
- Courtly love
- Erotomania
- Erotophobia
- Intimate relationship
- Limerence
- Love Letters
- Marriage
- Physical intimacy
- Romanticism
- Romantic friendship
- Romance novel
- Sexual relationship
- Terms of endearment
- Valentine's Day
