The Amorous Heart
An Unconventional History of Love
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- $21.99
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
An eminent scholar unearths the captivating history of the two-lobed heart symbol from scripture and tapestry to T-shirts and text messages, shedding light on how we have expressed love since antiquity
The symmetrical, exuberant heart is everywhere: it gives shape to candy, pendants, the frothy milk on top of a cappuccino, and much else. How can we explain the ubiquity of what might be the most recognizable symbol in the world?
In The Amorous Heart, Marilyn Yalom tracks the heart metaphor and heart iconography across two thousand years, through Christian theology, pagan love poetry, medieval painting, Shakespearean drama, Enlightenment science, and into the present. She argues that the symbol reveals a tension between love as romantic and sexual on the one hand, and as religious and spiritual on the other. Ultimately, the heart symbol is a guide to the astonishing variety of human affections, from the erotic to the chaste and from the unrequited to the conjugal.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Yalom (How the French Invented Love) traces the many iterations of heart iconography and its use as a metaphor for love throughout history in this dynamic study. When the heart shape first appeared more than 2,500 years ago, it had not yet taken on the romantic meaning it has today and was simply used for decoration. The first heart shape associated with the concept of love was conelike and appeared in the art of medieval France and Italy, and 14th-century European painters are credited with the evolution of the iconic, bi-lobed shape. Now the two-sided heart appears everywhere and is one of the most recognizable symbols on Earth. Over the course of this interdisciplinary study, Yalom examines the "heart's turbulent emotions" in Shakespeare's work, travels back to the first celebration of Saint Valentine's Day in the Middle Ages, and explores heart symbolism in Christianity. Yalom's book is a scholarly and fresh approach to art history.
