Who invented love?

October 11, 2006 12:17 PM

What's the real origin of the concept of romantic love?

I've read that the idea of romantic love was 'invented' in the middle ages. I'm not sure I totally understand what that means, but I do get that in many cultures until that point (and after too of course) mates were chosen based on their suitability or compatability or whatnot, but not because the couple had romantic feelings for each other.

Anyway, this 'romantic love was invented in the middle ages' thing kind of bugs me because I get the idea that this goes along with the supposition that Europeans invented romantic love. This doesn't seem accurate.

What did people call the feeling you get in your chest when you first smooch someone new before the so-called inevention of love? All the body chemistry that makes us feel in love existed before that time, right?

And why do some historians think that Europeans invented love? I don't know much about classical literature from any culture, but can you point me to art/music/writing/stories from India, China, Egypt, or anywhere in the world from before the 'invention of love' that depicts romantic love?

posted by serazin to human relations (15 comments total)

You're looking at this the wrong way. Love isn't something like "gunpowder" that's a thing or even something like "gravity" that isn't a thing, but is still understood objectively.

When people say "love was invented in the Middle Ages" (which is arguable) they're talking about our concept of love, which is European for the same reason that we are speaking English.

Obviously, some things will be recognizably the same across time and space to the extent that romantic love is really a dolled up version of the desire to procreate.
posted by dagnyscott at 12:36 PM on October 11, 2006

Right, well I guess my question is basically, did Europeans in the middle ages invent our current way of thinking and talking about romantic love? If so, how did people talk and think about it before and in other cultures?
posted by serazin at 12:46 PM on October 11, 2006

I would look at the entry for courtly love on wikipedia, maybe also the entry for romantic love.

I took an honors English course in early college, and we read The Art of Courtly Love by Eleanor of Aquitane, and we also traced out how some of these ideas could be found in Ovid. Something like Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love by Bloch might help illuminate why it is said that it was invented at that time and place, an idea which I think is correct. An older book is Denis de Rougemont, Love in the Western World. Pantheon Books, 1956.
posted by AArtaud at 12:56 PM on October 11, 2006

Anatomy of Love by Dr. Helen Fisher has some interesting things to say about love, in both biological and cultural contexts. I recommend this book for your primary and follow-up questions.

One of her points is that romantic love as we commonly use the term (i.e. crushes or infatuation) has been around forever as far as anthropologists can tell. In pre-agricultural societies, humans (and hominids) probably did mate up according to affection, among other preferences. I'm leaving a lot out to save bandwidth, but the switch to agriculture changed the dating game profoundly. Once your property is not portable, and you're basically stuck where you are for life, the rules of inheritance get a lot more stringent and confining. Marriage became a game of maximizing property and inheritance, and arranged marriages became the norm. Love became irrelevant, except it just wouldn't go away. People still developed crushes on each other, except society forbade any match except the one arranged by the parents for reasons unrelated to love.

But unrequited or forbidden love hurts and tends to consume a lot of time, attention, and emotional energy. Music provides some solace for those feelings (even today, how many songs are about love that didn't work out?) The troubadours played to that need and glorified the whole star-crossed-lovers theme.

"Romantic love as invented the Middle Ages" refers, as far as I know, to the tradition propagated by the troubadours who sang love ballads in the common languages of France: Occitan, langue d'Oc, Provencal. These were Romance languages, in the sense of being descended from the Romans. Since the love ballads were sung in Romance languages, the terms got confounded and romance came to mean love.
posted by Quietgal at 1:10 PM on October 11, 2006 [1 favorite]

Courtly love, as it existed in the middle ages, is nothing like our concept of love today. I would not point to that as the origin of romantic love at all. Sorry I don't have an answer to the question, but my guess is it goes back to pre-civilization man.
posted by knave at 1:17 PM on October 11, 2006

Well, there must have been some awareness of it earlier than the middle ages because the Greeks distinguished between eros and agape.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 1:35 PM on October 11, 2006

As an aside, the Greek differentiated between philos, eros, and agape.
posted by AArtaud at 1:56 PM on October 11, 2006

As an aside, the Greek differentiated between philos, eros, and agape.

Actually, the Greeks differentiated among philia, eros, agape and storge - and this is not really an aside, it is the heart of the matter: in large part, "romantic love" does not make these distinctions.

I think there are several different issues at play in the question, and in the answers so far. If what you mean by romantic love is "the feeling you get in your chest..." then of course the conception has always been with us. If what you mean by the invention of romantic love is the awareness of the possibility of marrying for affection/compatibility rather than political/economic/social advantage, then no, this concept isn't really new either (though other cultures may have resolved the tension differently than ours).

I think that where the modern notion of "romantic love" differs from the classical view is the idea that one can (and even should) find a single mate who is both friend and lover - the object of sexual desire and sacrifical devotion in one. Fulfillment is achieved in romantic union - knowing and loving and cherishing the object of these desires - not in any one aspect, and not in mere possession, as might have been the case in earlier conceptions.
posted by Urban Hermit at 2:03 PM on October 11, 2006 [2 favorites]

What's the real origin of the concept of romantic love?
Sex, and lack of DNA testing in paternity (until recently.) I'm kinda serious here.
posted by DenOfSizer at 2:23 PM on October 11, 2006

It's existed at least as long as the Song of Solomon.
posted by leapingsheep at 3:08 PM on October 11, 2006

And why do some historians think that Europeans invented love?

I suspect that this REALLY means that in the middle ages, romantic love was sanctioned by society (more than it had been before). If someone is claiming that before that, people didn't FEEL love, they I'd say the burden of proof is on them.

My guess is that people felt love before people were people. It sure seems like other mammals can feel it.

But whether or not such feelings were taboo or okay -- at any given point in history -- is another matter.

I can imagine a future historian, looking back at our culture and seeing -- for the first time -- TV shows like "Will and Grace", saying, "Homosexuality was invented in the 21st Century."
posted by grumblebee at 3:37 PM on October 11, 2006

Pinker, in How The Mind Works, has a good passage about love.

"Love is crazy", we say, or "love makes you crazy", and we talk, or rather sing about "the way your wear your hat, the way you sip your tea", focusing on inexplicable things that make the person special to us, indefinably different to everyone else around them.

Pinker's point, paraphrasing broadly, is that because we as a species tend to mate, stay together and raise children, love ought to be irrational. It makes sense in Evolutionary Psychology for one person to become unaccountable special to another, because otherwise we'd always be leaving each other for someone who might very well be a bit more attractive in some rational, measurable way. We'd conduct our affairs like robots, saying "well, you score 93%, but I've just met another girl who scores 94%, so I'm leaving you for her".

So despite the "crazy" thing, which might seem like a problem for the species, it's actually an evolutionary bonus and therefore has almost certainly been there for a really long time.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 9:03 PM on October 11, 2006 [2 favorites]

I took a class as an undergrad in Chinese Lit and Love where we read classics mining for themes related to larger sociological notions of relationships in Chinese culture. A lot of the classics are about people going the normal suitability/family lineage route until order is destroyed by Real Love (a la Romeo And Juliet). The issue, as it seems like you know already, is hardly European/Medieval-And-On only. The ways in which romantic love fucks up the practical sensibilities and desires of society is documented everywhere. Writers everywhere and at every time marveled at this. But yeah, sounds like you knew that.
posted by ifjuly at 9:27 PM on October 11, 2006

Try The Dictionary of the History of Ideas article. It's about 13,000 words, so set aside some time. Executive summary from the top of the piece:

Chimeras or realities, there are five distinguishable groups of ideas here which have been called “love” in Western civilization at various times or simultaneously: (1) the generative principle of the Cosmos, hence the very being of God (creativity); (2) friendship, the attachment to other creatures, the yearning for others (benevolent, educative, transformative, admiring, and exalting) or for concrete or ideal things (an active attitude); (3) the emotional attraction, the effects in man of a power which “possesses him,” a physiological, psychological, or mythical force (a passive attitude); (4) the torment of a passion willfully chosen, the artificial devices and “perversions” of eroticism, desire cultivated for its own sake (culture); (5) sexual relations, procreative and generic desire (instinct).

Denis de Rougemont, who wrote Love in the Western World, wrote this article. (I've read the article but not the book.)
posted by cgc373 at 9:38 PM on October 11, 2006 [1 favorite]

I don't think the idea is that the feeling itself was invented/discovered in the Middle Ages (which would be ridiculous) but that until then romantic/sexual love was seen as a distraction from the real business of life, and frequently as a catastrophe to be avoided if possible. It was the troubadours who propagated the idea that your life could and should focus on it. I don't think it was until the nineteenth century that a lot of people started thinking it should go along with marriage, but I could be wrong about that.
posted by languagehat at 7:10 AM on October 12, 2006