Love in Art and Idea 

Note For New Web Users:
    Directly below this note, you will find a table with various links.  Those on the left will send you to sections further down this page.  (You may wish to print this entire page for personal reference.)  The middle three will link you to locations necessary for the active aspects of this course.  Those on the right may be used for further exploration.
 
 

Texts	Chat Rooms (Sundays, 8 pm EST)	UWW home page
Written Work for Course	Bulletin Board (Ad lib)	English Department
Weekly Course Schedule	E-Mail to François	Skidmore Library and databases
		François' Home Page

Course Description

    An examination of various ways that love has been represented and accounted for in Western culture.  From platonic dialogues to contemporary theories of rhetoric, myth, evolution, psychology and of biochemical interactions,  the course seeks to study conceptual explanations for something that may or may not exist on its own, or if it does exist, it may or may not be "explainable."  Having established theoretical approaches, we will consider a possible disharmony between analytical method and subject matter by exploring artistic forms which have sought to represent, more than interpret, love.
 

Texts:

Symposium, a dialogue by Plato
The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm
 "The Hitchhiking Game," a short story by Milan Kundera (available as link from homepage)
M.Butterfly, a play by David Huang
Madame Butterfly, selections from the opera by Puccini (recommended)
Dangerous Liaisons, a film directed by Stephen Frears )
The Evolution of Love, Ada Lampert (photocopied )
Beloved, a novel by Toni Morrison
"Ideologies of Lovestyles and Sexstyles" (an article I'll mail also)
The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell interviewed by Bill Moyers
The Romance of Tristan and Iseult, as retold by Joseph Bédier
Tristan and Isolde, Wagner (video or CD of the opera (optional))
The Fisher King, a film directed by Terry Gilliam
 

Student Written Work:

 Over the course of the semester, students will be expected to write a series of one-page, informal responses to texts to be posted on the bulletin board anytime before the class "chat room" meeting.  All students should read the entire bulletin board before the "chat" session.  One short essay (750 words) and a longer, final essay (1,250 words) will be composed and submitted as "attached files" via e-mail.  There will be a comprehensive final examination.

Course Schedule:

Week #1
    Introduction to the interdisciplinarity of the course.  Argument for a blend of chaotic curiosity and academic rigor, forming a sort of cubist inquiry.

Week #2
   Plato's Symposium  approached as an ancient attempt to examine our theme from many perspectives.  Difference as meaning: Greek "eros" and "philia."
Stuff about the Greek philosophers

Week #3
    First 30 pages of Fromm's The Art of Loving.
    Kundera's "The Hitchhiking Game" as representation of where the "self" might or might not reside in a relationship.  Sadism & masochism as possible psychological confusions in a love relationship.
Click here for a copy of "The Hitchhiking Game."

Week #4
    Love and political theory?  David Huang's play M. Butterfly deconstructs the myth of the oriental woman which underwrites Puccini's opera.  Seemingly blind, possessive love affair between French diplomat and Chinese actor (who plays women's parts) as metaphor for Western inability to step outside of its own mythos when interpreting Asian culture.

Week #5
    Stephen Frears' film Dangerous Liaisons, adapted from the play by Christopher Hampton, itself adapted from the early French novel by Choderlos de Laclos.   The art of seduction among French aristocracy, possibilities of spiritual innocence, love as manipulation.

Week #6
    The Evolution of Love, an anthropological argument for love as brain function with evolutionary "reasons."

Week #7
    Toni Morrison's novel of Magical Realism, Beloved, a dramatic meditation on love (here "amor" and "philia") as life force and as monster of conflict and death.   Magical Realism  seeks not the unconscious of Surrealism, nor the privileging of a social-scientific, rational mindset in Realism, but mythic interplay between the two.

Week #8
     "Ideologies of Lovestyles and Sexstyles," (in photocopy package I'll mail)
    Bill Moyers' interviews of Joseph Campbell yielded the chapter "Tales of Love and Marriage," wherein Campbell differentiates between "Eros," "Agape," and "Amor" in Western history. (Read Chapter 1 and Chapter Chapter 7)
    Pages 30 through 74 of Fromm's The Art of Loving.
 Click here for lecturette on myth
Week #9
    The Romance of Tristan and Iseult.  Romantic love in all its glorious passion and pathos.  The courtly traditions.

Week #10
    Finish Fromm's  The Art of Loving.
    The film The Fisher King.   The maturation of a shock-jock  from eros, through agape, and into amor.  Interplay of myth and perceived reality, both of which are seemingly necessary for amor.
 Click here for course wrapup lecturette

Last Update: May, 1999
URL: http://www.skidmore.edu/~fbonnevi/love-course-page.htm