Sentimental Love Research Articles

Bécquer's Extrapolation to Express the Ineffable

Bécquer's Extrapolation to Express the Ineffable Ronald J. Quirk Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer was a poet of profound sensibility with keen insight into the human heart. His verses strive to convey the deepest sentiments of love, loss, rejection, and nostalgia. Yet, Bécquer always felt that language was unable to express his message; he struggled with the limitations of words to communicate.1 In the "Introducción sinfónica" to his works, Bécquer wrote: "Pero ¡ay, que entre el mundo de la idea y el de la forma existe un abismo que solo puede salvar la palabra; y la palabra, tímida y perezosa, se niega a secundar sus esfuerzos!" (Obras completas, Aguilar 50). In his Rimas Bécquer also laments this imprisonment within the constraints of language. In his famous Rima XI,2 which many editors place first in his collection of poems, he exclaims: Yo sé un himno gigante y extrañoque anuncia en la noche del alma una aurora, y estas páginas son de ese himnocadencias que el aire dilata en las sombras. Yo quisiera escribirle, del hombredomando el rebelde mezquino idioma, con palabras que fuesen a un tiemposuspiros y risas, colores y notas. [End Page 105] Pero en vano es luchar; que no hay cifracapaz de encerrarle, y apenas, ¡oh hermosa!, si teniendo en mis manos las tuyaspodría al oído cantártelo a solas.3 Poets who preceded Bécquer and others who have written after him have labored under the same sense of the inadequacy of language. The most prominent example is the sixteenth-century mystic San Juan de la Cruz. In the nineteenth century German and Spanish Romantics also complained of the confinement of language (Díaz 270-71, 327), and in the twentieth century Jonathan Mayhew pointed to "the major current in modern poetry that emphasizes the limits of language" (1151).4 In his Rima XI (I), cited above, Bécquer sees the only way of communicating completely and authentically as a person to be "apenas … teniendo en mis manos las tuyas, podría al oído cantártelo a solas." But as a poet he is left with the tools of his craft – words. In this Rima Bécquer also lists some of the attributes of the elusive words that would have the power to express his message. First is musicality – "cadencias" in line four, and "cantar" in the last line. He longs for words that would simultaneously be sounds and colors in lines seven and eight – "palabras que fuesen a un tiempo suspiros y risas, colores y notas." Suspiros, risas, and notas are oral but not verbal, and colores are visual. In other Rimas Bécquer makes use of the poet's customary oral devices, such as alliteration (e.g., "paso perezoso" in Rima LXVI [XL]) and onomatopeia (e.g., "balbucear breves palabras" in Rima XVI [XLII] and "suspirando pasa el viento murmurador" in Rima XLIII [XVI]), to enhance his words. However, the musicality, plasticity, and rhetorical devices of Bécquer's poetry are not the focus here. Bécquer employs another technique that I will explore, a technique that has not been adequately studied by critics and one that speaks not to the senses of hearing or sight, but instead directly to the intellect – the technique of extrapolation. This is an uncomplicated but effective stratagem. A solution to the challenge of conveying the ineffable is to extend the use of rational equations and calculations to express what is beyond reason and is incalculable. Bécquer, one of the most ethereal of poets, is not adverse to using the mathematical [End Page 106] formula a is to b as c is to d, represented as a:b :: c:d. Bécquer's expansion of the parallel a:b :: c:d to parallels beyond human ability to express, or even apprehend, can transcend the confinement of language. It is essentially a magnification, an extrapolation, of a second (or third) parallelism over the first to the immeasurable.5 Bécquer did not invent this technique; earlier poets and even folkloric poetry already contained it,6 but Bécquer uses it...

Song of the South Side: A Fine Romance in Southside with You

Love stories are important tools for building cultural communities. Paying attention to the culturally established process by which new members are initiated in a group is a way of keeping loyalty to and satisfaction with the group. The recent movie Southside with You depicts the beginning of the love story of Michelle and Barack Obama. It differs from the usual movie biographies of important people. Their future importance is not emphasized, and the usual devices of serious conflict, exciting action, and sentimental love scenes are absent. The happy couple do not even end up together in love. But the themes alluded to and the audience attitudes aroused are cultural achievements that are useful to cultural communities.

Are sentiments subject to selection pressures? The case of oxytocin.

We argue that natural selection operates on emotional and cognitive capacities supporting the subjective experience of sentiments, rather than on discrete sentiments themselves. We support this argument by examining the case of oxytocin in relation to the sentiment of love. We also explore future directions for health psychology research that includes "cold" aspects of contempt in conjunction with "hot" aspects.

Narrative Protocols, Dialogic Imagination and Identity Contestation: A Critique of a Prescribed English Literature Curriculum

A critique of the prescribed Anglo-American canon for Jordanian Universities, this article utilises narrative protocols and storytelling juxtaposed against my own literary education and a former student of mine. It examines how lived experiences, identity contestations and reconciliations are reflected and reinforced in a dialogic exchange with the study of English literature at undergraduate, graduate levels as well as while teaching. In the ‘New Times’ of cyberspaces and the Internet accretion, the data used in this study is gathered through email and Facebook message exchange between a former student of mine and myself. After first introducing the English literary curriculum used in Jordanian universities, this article offers a critique of the canon pointing out that the study of English literature. As traditionally conceived in these universities, this tradition reinforces Eurocentrism, monolithic, elitism and particularly, and for the purpose of this article, in the ways it is disseminated, it signifies relations of power in the academy. It further shows how the subject-positions of students of English in this context are contested between repulsion, conformity, and when textual cultural representations are at stake, they pass through a process of an ‘imbibing’ construction of identity that reconciles warring sentiments of love and agony. The paper concludes by reminding literature educators that some students bring profound experiences of anguish and identity contestation with them to the literature classroom, and that it is therefore our responsibility to challenge the hegemonic and essentialised ideologies and practices informed by the adoption, perpetuation and dissemination of the literary canon in these educational contexts.

Book Review: Todd M. Brenneman: Homespun Gospel: The Triumph of Sentimentality in Contemporary American Evangelicalism

In Homespun Gospel Todd M. Brenneman argues evangelicalism today relies far less on doctrine and a rigorous system of belief than it did in previous generations. It now promotes a message of God’s sentimental love for humanity at the expense of deep intellectual engagement, and this preference for emotion over intellect has profound implications for the future of the movement. In contrast to other periods of Christian history, intellectual and doctrinal affirmations of God, Scripture, and the Christian life are now secondary to sentimental feelings of connection to God, and it is the authenticity of these feelings that corroborate the faith experience rather than agreement with a set of doctrines. Given this shift, Brenneman argues that the trend in religious scholarship—to treat evangelicalism primarily as a system of beliefs— should give way to study of the movement as both a set of doctrines and an ‘‘aesthetic world where emotion is the currency’’ (p. 13). Brenneman operationalizes sentimentality as ‘‘emotional language that depends on the tropes of familial conceptions of God,’’ (p. 7) especially God as father, humans as children, and nostalgia for the Victorian nuclear family. The approach is both historical and sociological, incorporating Scottish Common Sense, Dwight L. Moody, and Harriet Beecher Stowe with texts from contemporary evangelical preachers. This approach allows him to situate the current use of sentimentality in a larger context that compares both the historical and the contemporary. The primary source of contemporary content comes from publications of mega-pastors Rick Warren, Joel Osteen, and Max Lucado, whose texts serve as the empirical backbone of the book. Sentimental content is quoted at length to support the primary argument: evangelicals are sentimentalists, and the proof is in the texts of these evangelical icons who sell millions of copies of their books.

Посвящения “прекрасному полу” в русских изданиях XVIII века

Literary works were often dedicated to women in eighteenth-century Russia. At that time, not only crowned heads of state served as patrons, but also, and often, noble and educated ladies. Dedications to the “fair sex” followed the European, especially the French, tradition of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. These polite dedications began to appear in original and translated works by Russian authors starting from the late 1760s. As a rule, they were tinged with sentiments of love, and the women to whom they were addressed appear in them as objects of worship. One of the main examples is Karamzin's verse ‘Epistle to Women’ (1795), which can be seen as an early Russian defense of women's rights.

'These Great and Beautiful Republics of the Dead': Public Constitutionalism and the Antebellum Cemetery

“Public Constitutionalism and the Antebellum Cemetery” joins the growing literature on public constitutionalism by focusing on the seventy addresses given at cemetery dedications from Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story’s address at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1831, through the addresses of Edward Everett and Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg in November 1863. The addresses were part of a vibrant public discussion of constitutional principles, which spanned such diverse occasions as July Fourth celebrations, arguments in great constitutional cases (like Daniel Webster’s Dartmouth College argument), dedication of public monuments (like Daniel Webster’s speech at the placement of the cornerstone of the Bunker Hill Monument in 1824), lyceum addresses, and college literary society lectures. For Americans, especially those of the Whig Party, the Constitution was a key component of culture and a key unifier of the nation. Rural cemeteries provided support for such constitutional values. They brought beauty and order to the landscape; they served to mediate an impersonal, commercial world and brought uplift through the lessons of morality and patriotism that people learned when they visited the cemeteries. The cemetery supported constitutional values of Union, respect for property, and obedience to the rule of law. For visitors to the cemetery learned about the importance of each of those values at the cemetery. It was an instructor of values; its ordered lanes and graves also served as a sign of the health of the Christian republic. For the cemetery fulfilled duties owed the past. The cemetery inspired sentiments of love of family and country. People would leave the cemetery inspired to preserve the United States as a Christian republic. Finally, these abstract ideas were promoted through private charitable corporations. Those private organizations brought the community together to promote the republic. The cemeteries were, thus, one important institution – along with the schools, churches, civic associations, and businesses – that helped create and preserve the Union. The cemetery dedication addresses, like other addresses designed to promulgate constitutional ideas, mixed appeals to economics, morality, religion, and political theory with legal and constitutional ideas. Rural cemeteries promoted Whig constitutional ideals about order, patriotism, and Union. Those values were at the center of the debate over the response to secession and they were put into practice by soldiers along Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg in 1863. Lincoln’s address at Gettysburg, thus, reflects the appeals to sentiment and Constitution that were so frequently invoked in the thirty years before the War. This article reveals an important and neglected role of oratory in disseminating constitutional ideas, as well as the significance of rural cemeteries to public constitutional thought. This hidden history reveals how those ideas mobilized support for Union and, thus, how public constitutional thought affects the actions of voters, jurists, and politicians.

The discourse of romantic love on the Miskito Coast

abstract This Article examines the sentiment of love among the indigenous Miskitu people along along the Honduran and Nicaraguan Caribbean Coast. Miskitu women historically have held high positions of power in their matrilocal society. Since the lobster-diving industry began in the 1970s, however, gender and power relations have shifted, rendering women more dependent on men who earn wages. Women's loss of power is not only due to the economic changes, but it is also caused by the ideology and discourse of romantic love in Miskitu society. The main body of the Article explores the ideology of Miskitu love through three discourse genres – involuntary love, commodified love, and violent love. It is argued that whilst Miskitu women are victims of romantic love within the changing economic and social conditions, Miskitu women still have the capacity to negotiate their positionality and use strategies of resistance to navigate the highly gendered domain of romantic love. Miskitu women can claim both agency and constraint (Cole and Thomas, 2009; Padilla et al, 2007; Wardlow and Hirsch, 2006). The literature similarly shows that gender inequality may constrain women's options but it does not determine them as women – women are able to manoevre within its constraints. Miskitu women are seen as strategisers who create sexual meanings and use sexual resources to achieve their goals. This Article is important because of what it reveals of romantic love within a specific context and for what it reveals about gender oppression, yet it is important to understand Miskitu women's resistance to romantic love.

Forgotten Virtues

Forgotten Virtues

Perceptions of love and sex across the adult life span

Four distinct aspects of the perceptions of love and sex have recently been proposed: (a) Love is Most Important – the emotion of love is more important than anything else; (b) Sex Demonstrates Love – although sex is important, it demonstrates the deeper sentiment of love; (c) Love Comes Before Sex – love comes before and “drives” sex; and (d) Sex is Declining – sex diminishes in a relationship (Hendrick & Hendrick, 2002). This study explored the factor structure of perceptions of love and sex in a Portuguese sample throughout the adult life span. A total of 924 men and women (52% women) participated, all of whom were currently in a romantic relationship. The Perceptions of Love and Sex Scale showed the same four-factor structure that was evidenced in U.S. samples, and acceptable psychometric properties. Age and gender influenced these perceptions of love and sex. Expected correlations with measures of other relationship constructs were found.

The Place of Sentimental Song in Contemporary Korean Musical Life

Scholarly and official discourses on Korean music have focused almost exclusively on the range of genres that fall under the broad rubric of “ kugak. ” Yet it is well known to Koreans and foreign observers alike that kugak is little known and underappreciated by the majority of Koreans today. While many Koreans study Western classical music and hold it in high regard, the music that is most widely consumed, and can be said to be the most popular and meaningful in the lives of contemporary Koreans, is Korean popular music (taejung kayo), and particularly the genre of sentimental love songs known as palladŭ. Although the Korean government has expressed pride in the international spread of Korean popular culture (the “Korean Wave”), cultural policy mostly sanctions kugak and denigrates popular music. I challenge the notion that Korean popular music should merely be viewed as an economic commodity, somehow not truly representative of Korean culture, lacking “Koreanness.” Focusing on musical style, language, emotion, and visual imagery, I discuss representative palladŭ songs and their recent history, considering the elements that are widely felt to be “Korean.”

Jesus beyond Christianity: the classic texts

General Introduction I: JESUS IN JUDAISM: THE CLASSIC TEXTS Jewish Perceptions of Jesus: Key Issues 1. Dangerous Times for Jews 2. The Rejected Disciple 3. A Teacher of Jewish Law 4. The Bible Testifies Against the Deity of Jesus 5. The Church - Not Jesus - is the Heretic 6. Jesus: Jewish Evangelist to the Gentiles 7. Reasons for Jewish Silence on Jesus 8. Jesus: An Unoriginal Pharisee 9. Jesus: Forerunner of the Reform Jew 10. The Value of the Gospels for a Jew 11. Jesus: A Prophet 12. Jesus: Destroyer of Culture and Nation 13. Jesus on Jewish Soil 14. No Sentimental Love Closing Reflection Questions for Discussion Guide for Further Reading II. JESUS IN ISLAM: THE CLASSIC TEXTS Muslim Perceptions of Jesus: Key Issues 1. The Miraculous Birth of Jesus 2. The Mission of Jesus 3. The End of Jesus' Life? 4. Right and Wrong Responses to Jesus 5. A Final Word from the Qur'an 6. Jesus in the Hadith 7. The Ascetic Jesus 8. Jesus and the Powers of God 9. Jesus in the Graveyard 10. A Rationalist Examines Christian Claims about Jesus 11. Jesus: A Mirror of God 12. Jesus and the Fool 13. On Praising a Human Being 14. Realising God 15. Who Died on the Cross? 16. Jesus in India 17. Jesus and Non-violence 18. Jesus Between Us and You Closing Reflection Questions for Discussion Guide for Further Reading III. JESUS IN HINDUISM: THE CLASSIC TEXTS Hindu Perceptions of Jesus: Key Issues 1. Jesus was a Unitarian 2. A Divine Teacher, Not Atoner 3. Jesus, The Ideal Son 4. Repudiate the Little Christ 5. Jesus: Simple, Honest & Ignorant 6. Mystical Experiences of the Universal Jesus 7. Jesus is like Ramakrishna 8. Jesus vs. His Christian Followers 9. Jesus Was Oriental 10. Jesus is the Property of the World 11. Christ Has Yet to be Born 12. Jesus' Message Continues to be Ignored 13. An Avatar of Sorrow 14. An Eastern Seer Closing Reflection Questions for Discussion Guide for Further Reading IV. JESUS IN BUDDHISM: THE CLASSIC TEXTS Buddhist Perceptions of Jesus: Key Issues 1. Jesus: Son of a Dubious Deity 2. The Founder of a Passive Religion 3. Jesus: A Teacher of Morality 4. A Demon in Disguise 5. Birth Omens Compared 6. A Man Between Egoism and Universalism 7. Jesus: Absolute and Relative 8. Obliterating God Consciousness 9. A Man Tortured by Contradictions 10. The Good Heart of Jesus Closing Reflection Questions for Discussion Guide for Further Reading Acknowledgements Index

Borderlines: The Shiftings of Gender in British Romanticism. Susan J. Wolfson . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006. Pp. xix+430.

<i>Borderlines: The Shiftings of Gender in British Romanticism</i>. Susan J. Wolfson . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006. Pp. xix+430.

“A Pearl in the Palm”: A Forgotten Symbol of the Father-Daughter Bond

The Chinese daughter has long been portrayed as an abject victim. However, abundant writings by Qing men reveal a genuine sentiment of love for daughters. This article demonstrates that loving a daughter was possible even in a society that valued sons over daughters. It further argues that the very political and social ins 1 titutions that historians believe bolstered gender inequality, such as the civil examinations and the marriage system, might in fact have fostered an emotional closeness between a father and daughter. Expansion in female education and emphasis on female talent in the Qing period, in the meantime, helped to forge a close father-daughter bond by undermining the intellectual barrier between men and their daughters.

What Romance Could Not Be

This essay makes a number of distinctions between the motives of love and of duty, and argues that ideally they act in concert so as to generate constancy in lov- ing relations. The essay revolves around a case in which a husband or wife is tempted to infidelity. It is argued that resistance to the temptation is optimally grounded in love for the spouse rather than simply in a duty to resist initiated perhaps through promise or vow. This is not, however, to undermine altogether the significance of promises of this sort; it is rather to put a proper emphasis on the sentiment of love as an effective spring to action and to suggest that the sentiment itself ideally brings a past promise or vow of fidelity into present relief in a choice situation.

On “viewing things” and “viewing nothing”: A dialogue between Confucianism and Phenomenology

In traditional Chinese expressions, guannian 观念 (ideas) are results of guan 观 (viewing). However, viewing can be understood to have two different levels of meanings: one is “viewing things,” that is, viewing with something to view; another is “viewing nothing,” that is, viewing with nothing to view. What are viewed in “viewing things” are either physical beings—all existing things and phenomena—or the metaphysical being (for example, the “Dao as a thing”). In both cases, something is being viewed. What is viewed in “viewing nothing” is the being itself, or “nothing,” in which there is nothing to view. According to Confucianism, the existence of “nothing” manifests itself as life sentiments, especially the sentiment of love, which is the very root and source of benevolence; moreover “viewing nothing” is, in essence, a perception of life. Life sentiments or the perception of life is “the thing itself ” prior to any being or any thing.

Homeward Bound or Housebound?

Homeward Bound or Housebound?

Regulating and Negotiating in T'urot'u, a Korean Popular Song Style

T'Arot'u (its name derived from the Korean pronunciation of the English, trot) is a South Korean sentimental love song style performed with an abundance of vocal inflections. While this popular music has existed in the music scene of Korea for more than eight decades, it has been received differently at different times throughout its history. For instance, t'irot'u enjoyed its heyday as the dominant Korean popular music until the 1970s, and it remains popular particularly among older adults (s6ngin) and working people (s6min). According to a survey by the Seoul Broadcasting System (SBS) program Kayosho (Popular Song Show) in 2003, 64 out of 100 of the all-time favorite Korean popular songs were t'arot'a songs.' Hence, this grassroots popular music genre can be easily heard in such spaces as taxis, buses, marketplaces, local festivals, and noraebang (private rooms for karaoke). In addition, the social meaning of t'Yrot'a has been complicated by its relations to successive ideological structures of Korea, such as the elite nationalism of the Japanese colonial period (1910-45), the cultural imperialism of the Cold War period (1950s-1970s), and the strategic essentialism of the military dictatorship (1960s-1980s). In the beginning, even though the song style was well accepted particularly by the urban bourgeoisie during the period of modernization, the early elite nationalists considered it to be a cultural threat. Since the nationalists during the Japanese colonial period intended to canonize traditional Korean music as a high-modern Korean culture, they worried about the impact of modern popular music and favored the resurrection of traditional musics (Robinson 1998, 372). Later, in 1984, the early elite nationalists' standpoint strongly influenced the postcolonial debate over the nationality of t'arot'a.2 In fact, the postcolonial argument has relentlessly been the main issue of t'arot'a since the introduction of governmental censorship in the 1960s. During the dictatorship in the 1960s and 1970s, the government viewed t'arot'u as a cultural vestige of the Japanese colony that needed to be erased. As seen in a number of cultural theses

Flirting with the Chamaleon: Alberti on Love

Within the vastness and variety of Leon Battista Alberti's work, the theme of love seems to pose a rather intractable problem, approached so far as a mere expression of his chameleonic versatility and, as such, as a juvenile example of his rhetorical mastery. And yet, the pervasiveness of the theme of love--amicable love, fraternal love, paternal love, uxorial love, but also sentimental love--in his writings claims for a more detailed account. This article aims at discussing Alberti's personal treatment of love by focusing on his Deifira, the first love dialogue ever written in the Italian vernacular, in accordance with its intellectual outline, its phenomenological design, and its philosophical significance, in order to illuminate what can be understood as an archeology of the emotional experience--an archeology of the emotional gestures and of the emotional words concealed in Alberti's amorous writings.

Moral sentiments and equilibrium moral codes

This paper shows that the consistent way of modeling sentiment‐driven moral behaviors in a setting of social interaction is to derive the equilibrium moral code that is mutually consistent with the optimal moral behavior of each player. To do this, it is necessary that moral sentiments be introduced explicitly into the utility function so that an individual could choose the optimal moral behavior that balances his/her narrow self‐interest against the avoidance of moral dissonance. It then demonstrates how the various equilibrium moral codes are derived from the key moral sentiments of love, guilt and envy.