Journal Entry # 2_January_ Why is love complicated?

Why is love so complicated?

The Renaissance was a time of rapid change in the arts, literature, and learning. New ideas were embraced, and old ones-including the concept of love- were examined from fresh perspectives. Poets of the day put their pens to many different aspects of love: unrequited love, constant love, timeless love, fickle love. What is so fascinating about love? Why does it seem so complicated?

Remember: Answer the questions on your Journal or notebook, discuss in class then present the answers for grading to your teacher.

Before you answer the question from the paragraph,  read below. Take in consideration the background information provided by the instructor when answering the question at the end of the first paragraph.

Love and Marriage

During the Renaissance, Europeans saw love and marriage as two important, but very different, parts of life. Poets described love as an overpowering force, both spiritual and sexual. For most people, however, marriage was a more practical matter. As the basic building block of society, it involved the expectations of families and communities, not just the wishes of two individuals. Although marriage was the normal state of life for most people, many remained unmarried for either practical or religious reasons.

Renaissance Ideas About Love. The idea of romantic love took shape in the centuries leading up to the Renaissance. The literature of the Middle Ages developed the concept of courtly love, which treated the beloved as a pure ideal. Two Italian writers of the 1300's, Dante Alighieri and Petrarch, drew on this tradition in their poetry. Each of them presented a beloved woman as a source of inspiration and a symbol of female perfection. European poetry in the following centuries followed their lead, treating love as an experience above and beyond ordinary life. Some poets saw sexual desire as a vital part of love, while others presented love as a pure and selfless emotion.

Renaissance thinkers viewed "platonic" love as the highest and noblest form of love. This concept of love was based on the ideas of the Neoplatonists, a group of philosophers who had given new interpretations to the works of the ancient Greek thinker Plato. They saw love as a path to the divine, which was the source of the beloved's beauty. Italian writer Baldassare Castiglione discussed Platonic love in the fourth part of The Book of the Courtier (1528).