Love and Romance through the ages
Love. ... Throughout history and into modern times men and women have written about love. ... In this paper I will review and compare the concepts of love and romance through several historical eras, including the current day. My thesis will be that, while cosmetic differences have certainly existed in the way love has been regarded by different societies, there are many recurring themes throughout the ages. In short, love is in many ways a human universal, rather than an invention of one particular culture. “Is love an emotion that we cannot resist or refuse? And will this fall into, or this assault by, love inevitably harm or help us? Some have thought that love is the definitive human emotion, that without it we would not be human. And yet others see clearly that the passion of love can, and almost always does, bring as much misery as it brings joy. No other passion seems to have the power of love, yet no other seems so fragile” (Hall 217). Ronald Hall writes about the eternal questions that people have asked about love, questions that are repeated in the themes of literature, mythology, and legendary stories from times past. Going back to Sumerian times and Mesopotamia, we see some examples of the ideology of love in that time. The epic story of Gilgamesh idealizes a brotherly love between Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu, and Gilgamesh’s trials and emotions when dealing with the loss of his friend. Some historians believe that the relationship is much deeper than that of our current definition of friendship or familial relationships (Nortwick 18) showing that a deeper love could exist between men in this period of history than many males would be comfortable with today. There has also been found a love dialogue between Inanna and Dumuzi (Kramer 370). Though scholars tend to disagree if this is love poetry or sexual poetry because it deals with a much more earthy love than the romantic ideals of medieval troubadours (Rubio 1), it still identifies the emotional state between a man and a woman.