Despite its title, Diane Ackerman's A Natural History of Love is not a systematic history of the subject, but a series of loosely-linked essays examining love from many different angles, many of them literary. It is the latter on which we will concentrate, but the rest of the book makes very good reading as well.
Ackerman is a poet and independent scholar rather than a specialist researcher; and her scholarship is not always impeccably up to date, but she is generally trustworthy and always stimulating.
Note: the pages below are treated in order of the
assignments for this class rather than strictly chronologically.
They cover somewhat less than half of the book.
pp. xxvi-xxiii
Identify a statement she makes about love that you
find particularly insightful or which you agree with and explain
why. Identify a statement about love which you find strange or
surprising and explain why. What is it that she says remains the
same about love throughout history? What changes? You may be surprised
to find after her opening statements here how extremely variable
she finds love to be in the following chapters. What do you think
of her claim that "The way we love in the twentieth century
is as much an accumulation of past sentiments as a response to
modern life"?
pp. 1-17
Egypt:
What is the most interesting (to you) thing she says
about Cleopatra? What was special about Egyptian attitudes toward
women? Ackerman assumes here that King Solomon wrote the Song
of Songs commonly attributed to him; but many modern scholars
believe it was written much later than his time and associated
with him because of its subject matter. Egyptian women are often
depicted hunting birds and fishing with their husbands. What is
the reason the woman in the second poem has returned home without
any birds? Do you agree with her that we tend to idealize all
the qualities of beautiful people? What does she argue is the
reason that we tend to use nature images in love poetry? The word
"mnemonic" means "having to do with memory;"
it is not clear to me what she means by it in the phrase "Love
is often depicted as a state of mnemonic possession" except
that she is probably punning on "demonic possession."
Perhaps she means "possessed by a memory."
Have you ever encountered the concept of love as a disease before?
Does it make sense to you? In what way does she say that being
in love and being a child are similar? What genetic reason does
she give for the incest taboo? When she says that "the Bible
often refers to (and condones) incestuous marriages," she
is probably thinking of relationships like that of Abraham and
Sarah (half-siblings, see Genesis 20); but the Hebrew scriptures
are generally quite hostile to incest. From what bit of evidence
does she deduce that homosexual love existed among the Egyptians?
pp. 17-39
Greece:
In what way does she say Athens in the fifth century
BCE was like America in the sixties? In what ways were women restricted
in ancient Greece? Why did these restrictions lead to homosexual
behavior among men? What qualities set courtesans apart from ordinary
Athenian women? What moral qualities did some Greeks ascribe to
homosexual love? What was the Greek attitude toward the relationship
between virtue and beauty? In what way did Greek attitudes differ
from the modern emphasis on the primacy of the nuclear family
as the basis of society? What was the relationship between love
and marriage? The story of Orpheus and Euridyce has been told
in many works of art, literature, and music. It was a particularly
popular subject for early operas because Orpheus was made into
a sort of god of music. Which do you find the most interesting
of her speculations as to why Orpheus turned back?
Rome:
Describe Roman attitudes toward women. The story
of Dido and Aeneas has been depicted in many works of art and
in the famous opera by Hector Berlioz, Les Troyens. This
story well reflects Roman values because it depicts the triumph
of duty (and imperial conquest) over love; but Ackerman tells
the story from Dido's view, which somewhat obscures this point.
Which wedding customs do we inherit from the ancient Romans? The
mistaken notion that the Romans engaged in constant orgies is
a result of the scandal-mongering of historians like Tacitus and
Suetonius, who hated the imperial family and attributed to them
all manner of outrageous behavior. The point to remember is that
these scandalous stories were repeated because they were considered
scandalous: regular Romans did not approve of such goings-on,
and were in fact generally more "Victorian" in their
morals than modern Americans.
pp. 39-43
Neither of the explanations Ackerman gives for the
low birth rate among noble Romans is supported by current scientific
research. In fact, it is a well-known fact that when people become
well off financially they tend to have fewer children. What was
Augustus' attitude toward marriage? What do you think of Ackerman's
attitude toward Ovid? Do you agree with it or disagree? Explain.
pp. 95-99
What is the meaning of Aristophanes' fable? How do
religious supplicants use erotic imagery?
pp. 314-322
Choose one or two of the uses of erotic imagery by
religious mystics discussed here and react to it. In what ways
are nuns the "brides of Christ?" What does Ackerman
mean by saying that she is agnostic but deeply religious? In what
ways does she compare the love of God to human love?
pp. 43-60
In what ways have women been associated with cleanliness?
What was the Church attitude toward tournaments? How did the Crusades
affect French noblewomen? What was the Medieval Christian attitude
toward sex in marriage? What ideas about love did Medieval readers
take from Greek and Roman authors? In what ways is Ibn Hazm's
attitude toward love similar to that of Medieval Christian thinkers?
Those who idealize the troubadours are often surprised at the
behavior and writing of the first of them, Guillaume IX (here
called "William"). In fact the troubadours were far
more earthy and sexual than they are often depicted. What was
the "avant-garde and dangerous idea" they advanced?
What were the principal characteristics of love in their view?
Strictly speaking, "troubadours" were always Provençal-speaking
poets from southern France. Their northern equivalents, coming
somewhat later, were called "trouvères." Both
words mean "finder" or "creator." The notion
that courtly love affairs were not consummated is widely held,
but false. One has only to read the prose tales of such love affairs
rather than the poetry--which is better known--to find abundant
sex (see, for instances, the lays of Marie de France. Poets wrote
about their frustration as a way of persuading women to make love
with them, but when they succeeded they tried to be discreet.
The result is that we have a lot of poetry about love-longing,
but not much about fulfillment. Ackerman is following an old-fashioned,
nineteenth-century view of courtly love of as perpetually suspended
in the non-physical realm. Otherwise she does a good job of describing
the stages through which a courtly love affair was expected to
pass. How are they similar to or different from the stages we
expect a love affair to pass through today? What does it mean
to say that "Virtue became the European harem?" When
Ackerman says that jealousy was considered noble among lovers
she is exaggerating somewhat. Most Medieval guides warn against
jealousy among both husbands and lovers, though lovers often express
their jealousy in their poems. How does she say that the notion
of intimacy between lovers arose? What do you think of her claim
that love has been the main subject of writers since the eleventh
century? What do you find appealing about Medieval attitudes toward
love?
pp. 105-112
The story of Tristan and Isolde was even more popular
in the Middle Ages than the very similar story of Lancelot and
Guinevere, which is better known today. The finest Medieval version
is the Tristan of Gottfried von Strassburg. In what ways
does this story seem different from the patterns described earlier
as characterizing "courtly love?" The word "passion"
is actually derived from a Latin root meaning "suffering"
(as in "the passion of Christ"). What do you think of
the statement that "three years is about as long as ardent
but unthwarted love can last?" In what ways does she argue
passion is a kind of longing for death? Do you agree? Why do you
think people enjoy reading about unhappy lovers?
pp. 66-75
What were the conflicting attitudes toward women
during the Renaissance? In what way did earlier centuries depict
women in the way that we have tended to depict men in modern times?
Love matches became popular in fiction and drama in Shakespeare's
time, but more as an escapist fantasy than as an attainable ideal.
Romeo and Juliet is in part a lesson on the dangers of
impulsive young love--undoubtedly exciting but potentially deadly.
Even in the next couple of centuries, when true love triumphed
over parental inflexibility, it usually did so through compromise,
with the beloved turning out to be just the sort of person the
parent wanted for an in-law all along. It is worth noting that
although fourteen- and fifteen-year-old girls did marry in Elizabethan
England, the actual average age of marriage was much older. What
makes Shakespeare's lovers different from Medieval ones? What
are some of the different sorts of love depicted in Romeo and
Juliet? What characteristics were admired in courtly women
during the Renaissance?
pp. 75-82
We know about Casanova's adventures because he wrote
about them in great detail in his memoirs, The History of My
Life. Ackerman neglects to mention that whereas Casanova
was a very real person, Don Juan is fictional. Does the account
of Benjamin Franklin make you feel differently about him? How?
pp. 177-196
What qualities make human lovemaking different from
animal mating? Do you recognize her description of flirting? Is
it familiar behavior? Ackerman's examples of evolution among various
races to match their climates have been challenged in recent years
by some biologists; she notes herself a number of exceptions to
the seemingly obvious linkage which people have traditionally
made. What survival advantages does "cuteness" confer?
What reasons does she give for women cutting their hair short?
What do you think of her arguments?
pp. 255-256
What sorts of things does she find erotic? Can you
think of other examples in art you have seen?
pp. 82-91
What change in the late eighteenth century caused the shift toward placing a value on the individual? What quality in the Enlightenment was the Romantic movement reacting against? Beethoven did not write all of his quartets while deaf--only the final ones. There is a recent--very bad--movie about Beethoven's love life entitled Immortal Beloved. It departs radically from what we know about his real life. In what ways did the nineteenth-century Romantics revert to Medieval patterns? What was distinctive about the new attitudes toward love? What were the effects of Victorian ideals on sexual behavior? What events and movements have caused our time to be so radically different from the Victorian Age?
Created by Paul Brians August 29, 1997.
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