Romance

Abstract: Part I. Need and Recognition: 1. Emotions as judgments of value 2. Humans and other animals: the neo-stoic view revised 3. Emotions and human societies 4. Emotions and infancy Interlude: 'things such as might happen' 5. Music and emotion Part II. Compassion: 6. Tragic predicaments 7. Compassion: the philosophical debate 8. Compassion and public life Part III. Ascents of Love: 9. Ladders of love: an introduction 10. Contemplative creativity: Plato, Spinoza, Proust 11. The Christian ascent: Augustine 12. The Christian ascent: Dante 13. The Romantic ascent: Emily Bronte 14. The Romantic ascent: Mahler 15. Democratic desire: Walt Whitman 16. The transfiguration of everyday life: Joyce.

Abstract: Preface. Introduction. 1. Everyday Experiments, Relationships, Sexuality. 2. Foucault on Sexuality. 3. Romantic Love and Other Attachments. 4. Love, Commitment and the Pure Relationship. 5. Love, Sex and Other Addictions. 6. The Sociological Meaning of Codependence. 7. Personal Turbulence, Sexual Troubles. 8. Contradictions of the Pure Relationship. 9. Sexuality, Repression, Civilisation. 10. Intimacy as Democracy. Index.

Abstract: This article presents a triangular theory of love According to the theory, love has three components: (a) intimacy, which encompasses the feelings of closeness, connectedness, and bondedness one experiences in loving relationships; (b) passion, which encompasses the drives that lead to romance, physical attraction, and sexual consummation; and (c) decision/commitment, which encompasses, in the short term, the decision that one loves another, and in the long term, the commitment to maintain that love The amount of love one experiences depends on the absolute strength of these three components, and the kind of love one experiences depends on their strengths relative to each other The three components interact with each other and with the actions that they produce and that produce them so as to form a number of different kinds of loving experiences The triangular theory of love subsumes certain other theories and can account for a number of empirical findings in the research literature, as well as for a number of experiences with which many are familiar firsthand It is proposed that the triangular theory provides a rather comprehensive basis for understanding many aspects of the love that underlies close relationships What does it mean "to love" someone? Does it always mean the same thing, and if not, in what ways do loves differ from each other? Why do certain loves seem to last, whereas others disappear almost as quickly as they are formed? This article seeks to answer these and other questions through a triangular theory of love This tripartite theory deals both with the nature of love and with loves in various kinds of relationships The presentation of the theory will be divided into three main parts In the first part, the main tenets of the theory will be explained and discussed, and the theory will be compared with other theories of love In the second part, the implications of the theory for close relationships and satisfaction in them will be described In the third part, the theory will be shown to account for many of the empirical phenomena that have been observed with regard to love

Abstract: Originally published in 1984, Reading the Romance challenges popular (and often demeaning) myths about why romantic fiction, one of publishing's most lucrative categories, captivates millions of women readers. Among those who have disparaged romance reading are feminists, literary critics, and theorists of mass culture. They claim that romances enforce the woman reader's dependence on men and acceptance of the repressive ideology purveyed by popular culture. Radway questions such claims, arguing that critical attention \"must shift from the text itself, taken in isolation, to the complex social event of reading.\" She examines that event, from the complicated business of publishing and distribution to the individual reader's engagement with the text. Radway's provocative approach combines reader-response criticism with anthropology and feminist psychology. Asking readers themselves to explore their reading motives, habits, and rewards, she conducted interviews in a midwestern town with forty-two romance readers whom she met through Dorothy Evans, a chain bookstore employee who has earned a reputation as an expert on romantic fiction. Evans defends her customers' choice of entertainment; reading romances, she tells Radway, is no more harmful than watching sports on television. \"We read books so we won't cry\" is the poignant explanation one woman offers for her reading habit. Indeed, Radway found that while the women she studied devote themselves to nurturing their families, these wives and mothers receive insufficient devotion or nurturance in return. In romances the women find not only escape from the demanding and often tiresome routines of their lives but also a hero who supplies the tenderness and admiring attention that they have learned not to expect. The heroines admired by Radway's group defy the expected stereotypes; they are strong, independent, and intelligent. That such characters often find themselves to be victims of male aggression and almost always resign themselves to accepting conventional roles in life has less to do, Radway argues, with the women readers' fantasies and choices than with their need to deal with a fear of masculine dominance. These romance readers resent not only the limited choices in their own lives but the patronizing atitude that men especially express toward their reading tastes. In fact, women read romances both to protest and to escape temporarily the narrowly defined role prescribed for them by a patriarchal culture. Paradoxically, the books that they read make conventional roles for women seem desirable. It is this complex relationship between culture, text, and woman reader that Radway urges feminists to address. Romance readers, she argues, should be encouraged to deliver their protests in the arena of actual social relations rather than to act them out in the solitude of the imagination. In a new introduction, Janice Radway places the book within the context of current scholarship and offers both an explanation and critique of the study's limitations.