Love and its Critics : From the Song of Songs to Shakespeare and Milton's Eden

This book is a history of love and the challenge love offers to the laws and customs of its times and places, as told through poetry from the Song of Songs to John Milton's Paradise Lost. It is also an account of the critical reception afforded to such literature, and the ways in which criticism has...

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Autores principales: Michael Bryson, Arpi Movsesian
Formato: Online
Lenguaje:inglés
Publicado: Open Book Publishers 2021
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Acceso en línea:40587
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author Michael Bryson
Arpi Movsesian
author_browse Arpi Movsesian
Michael Bryson
author_facet Michael Bryson
Arpi Movsesian
author_sort Michael Bryson
collection Directory of Open Access Books
description This book is a history of love and the challenge love offers to the laws and customs of its times and places, as told through poetry from the Song of Songs to John Milton's Paradise Lost. It is also an account of the critical reception afforded to such literature, and the ways in which criticism has attempted to stifle this challenge. Bryson and Movsesian argue that the poetry they explore celebrates and reinvents the love the troubadour poets of the eleventh and twelfth centuries called fin'amor: love as an end in itself, mutual and freely chosen even in the face of social, religious, or political retribution. Neither eros nor agape, neither exclusively of the body, nor solely of the spirit, this love is a middle path. Alongside this tradition has grown a critical movement that employs a ‘hermeneutics of suspicion', in Paul Ricoeur's phrase, to claim that passionate love poetry is not what it seems, and should be properly understood as worship of God, subordination to Empire, or an entanglement with the structures of language itself - in short, the very things it resists. The book engages with some of the seminal literature of the Western canon, including the Bible, the poetry of Ovid, and works by English authors such as William Shakespeare and John Donne, and with criticism that stretches from the earliest readings of the Song of Songs to contemporary academic literature. Lively and enjoyable in its style, it attempts to restore a sense of pleasure to the reading of poetry, and to puncture critical insistence that literature must be outwitted. It will be of value to professional, graduate, and advanced undergraduate scholars of literature, and to the educated general reader interested in treatments of love in poetry throughout history.
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spelling doab-20.500.12854ir-520062023-12-20T18:09:29Z Love and its Critics : From the Song of Songs to Shakespeare and Milton's Eden Michael Bryson Arpi Movsesian PN1-6790 love critical reception Western canon hermeneutics fin'amor troubadour poets poetry bic Book Industry Communication::D Literature & literary studies This book is a history of love and the challenge love offers to the laws and customs of its times and places, as told through poetry from the Song of Songs to John Milton's Paradise Lost. It is also an account of the critical reception afforded to such literature, and the ways in which criticism has attempted to stifle this challenge. Bryson and Movsesian argue that the poetry they explore celebrates and reinvents the love the troubadour poets of the eleventh and twelfth centuries called fin'amor: love as an end in itself, mutual and freely chosen even in the face of social, religious, or political retribution. Neither eros nor agape, neither exclusively of the body, nor solely of the spirit, this love is a middle path. Alongside this tradition has grown a critical movement that employs a ‘hermeneutics of suspicion', in Paul Ricoeur's phrase, to claim that passionate love poetry is not what it seems, and should be properly understood as worship of God, subordination to Empire, or an entanglement with the structures of language itself - in short, the very things it resists. The book engages with some of the seminal literature of the Western canon, including the Bible, the poetry of Ovid, and works by English authors such as William Shakespeare and John Donne, and with criticism that stretches from the earliest readings of the Song of Songs to contemporary academic literature. Lively and enjoyable in its style, it attempts to restore a sense of pleasure to the reading of poetry, and to puncture critical insistence that literature must be outwitted. It will be of value to professional, graduate, and advanced undergraduate scholars of literature, and to the educated general reader interested in treatments of love in poetry throughout history. 2021-02-11T18:04:01Z 2021-02-11T18:04:01Z 2019-12-06 13:15:40 book 40587 9791036500770 https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/52006 eng image/png Attribution 4.0 International http://books.openedition.org/obp/4372 Open Book Publishers b014b543-78bd-4c3b-bc71-b68e2ac855b9 9791036500770 open access
spellingShingle PN1-6790
love
critical reception
Western canon
hermeneutics
fin'amor
troubadour poets
poetry
bic Book Industry Communication::D Literature & literary studies
Michael Bryson
Arpi Movsesian
Love and its Critics : From the Song of Songs to Shakespeare and Milton's Eden
title Love and its Critics : From the Song of Songs to Shakespeare and Milton's Eden
title_full Love and its Critics : From the Song of Songs to Shakespeare and Milton's Eden
title_fullStr Love and its Critics : From the Song of Songs to Shakespeare and Milton's Eden
title_full_unstemmed Love and its Critics : From the Song of Songs to Shakespeare and Milton's Eden
title_short Love and its Critics : From the Song of Songs to Shakespeare and Milton's Eden
title_sort love and its critics from the song of songs to shakespeare and milton s eden
topic PN1-6790
love
critical reception
Western canon
hermeneutics
fin'amor
troubadour poets
poetry
bic Book Industry Communication::D Literature & literary studies
topic_facet PN1-6790
love
critical reception
Western canon
hermeneutics
fin'amor
troubadour poets
poetry
bic Book Industry Communication::D Literature & literary studies
url 40587
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