Love Stories: The Discourses of Desire in Literature and Culture, 1800 the Present

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Love Stories The Discourses of Desire in
Literature and Culture, 1800 the Present

• Session One

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Agenda

• Introduction the Aims and Purposes of the
  Seminar
• Loving, Telling, and Reading with Special
  Reference to John Keats
• Romanticism
• Theorising Love Stories Catherine Belsey,
  Reading Love Stories

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Introduction the Aims and Purposes of the Seminar

• Texts the analysis, history, and theory of a
  genre the love story across the media e5,
  e9
• Culture(s) the cultural history of love, the
  history of the idea of love e4, e9
• The Programme

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What is love?

• Tristan and Isolde
• Romeo and Juliet
• Other examples of great couples?
• What does this suggest about the nature of love?

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Loving, Telling, and Reading with Special
Reference to John Keats To Fanny Brawne

• You cannot conceive how I ache to be with you
  how I would die for one hour for what is in the
  world? I say you cannot conceive it is
  impossible you should look with such eyes upon me
  as I have upon you it cannot be (NE2 900)

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To Fanny Brawne

• Love the lovers desire for unity with his
  beloved

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To Fanny Brawne

• Love the lovers knowledge that unity is
  impossible
• lack of feeling of reciprocity
• Lover not a worthy love object I cannot be
  admired, I am not a thing to be admired
• Love creates its own obstacles Venus

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Loving with Special Reference to John Keats La
Belle Dame Sans Merci

• Unification revisited What happens to the knight?

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Loving, Telling, and Reading with Special
Reference to John Keats La Belle Dame Sans
Merci

• The frame story the knight and his interlocutor
• The framed story the knight and the lady
• The poem and its reader the literary ballad

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