Why are there so few 'happily ever afters' in the Romantic-period verse romance? Why do so many poets utilise the romance and its parts to such devastating effect? Why is gender so often the first victim? The Romantic Paradox investigates the prevalence of death in the poetic romances of the Della Cruscans, Coleridge, Keats, Mary Robinson, Felicia Hemans, Letitia Landon, and Byron, and posits that understanding the romance and its violent tendencies is vital to understanding Romanticism itself.
"The sexual revolution is justly celebrated for the freedoms it brought - birth control, the decriminalization of abortion, the liberalization of divorce, greater equality between the sexes, women's massive entry into the workforce, and more tolerance of homosexuality. ...Bruckner argues that our new freedoms have brought new burdens and rules - without, however, wiping out the old rules, emotions, desies and arrangements: the couple, marriage, jealousy, the demand for fidelity, the war between constancy and inconstancy. It is no wonder that love, sex, and relationships today are so confusing, so difficult, and so paradoxical. Drawing on history, politics, psychology, literature, pop culture, and current events, this book ... exposes and dissects these paradoxes. Bruckner traces the roots of sexual liberation back to the Enlightenment in order to explain love's supreme paradox, epitomized by the 1960s oxymoron of "free love": the tension between freedom, which separates, and love, which attaches. Ashamed that our sex lives fail to live up to such liberated ideals, we have traded neuroses of repression for neuroses of inadequacy, and we overcompensate: "Our parents lied about their morality", Bruckner writes, but "we lie about our immorality." "--Book jacket.
Grace and Luke are among the lucky few who find love early in life. At seventeen, both are equally certain that their love will last a lifetime. But when that love is cut short by forces beyond their control, Grace must answer the question of just how far she is willing to go to get back to Luke. But this is not the typical romantic tale. And just when you think you know where the story is going, you find yourself drawn into a whole new reality, where the fate of an entire world rests upon the choices of this one girl. Prepare to experience the adventure not only through the eyes of these two lovers, but also through the intertwined experiences of a group of remarkable dogs, as Grace's journey becomes so much more than her singular quest to return to the one she loves.
This study restores and enhances the philosophical aspect of early German Romanticism, offering an understanding of the movement's origins, development, aims and accomplishments.
First published in 1962, this book reveals unexpected complexity or equivocation in Wordsworth’s use of certain key words, particularly ‘image’, ‘form’ and ‘shape’. The author endeavours to show that this complexity is related to the poet’s awareness of the ambiguity of the perceptual process. Numerous passages from The Prelude and other poems are analysed to illustrate the argument and to show that, because of this doubt or hidden perplexity, Wordsworth’s poetry has a far richer texture, is more concentrated, intricately organised and loaded with ambivalent meanings than it would otherwise have been. New light is also shed on Wordsworth’s debt to Akenside.
The Marriage Paradox explores both national U.S. data and a smaller sample of emerging adults to find out how they really view marriage today. Interspersed with real stories and insight from emerging adults themselves, this book attempts to make sense of the increasingly paradoxical ways that young adults are thinking about marriage.
The Romantic poet's intense yearning to share thoughts and feelings often finds expression in a style that thwarts a connection with readers. Yohei Igarashi addresses this paradox by reimagining Romantic poetry as a response to the beginnings of the information age. Data collection, rampant connectivity, and efficient communication became powerful social norms during this period. The Connected Condition argues that poets responded to these developments by probing the underlying fantasy: the perfect transfer of thoughts, feelings, and information, along with media that might make such communication possible. This book radically reframes major poets and canonical poems. Igarashi considers Samuel Taylor Coleridge as a stenographer, William Wordsworth as a bureaucrat, Percy Shelley amid social networks, and John Keats in relation to telegraphy, revealing a shared attraction and skepticism toward the dream of communication. Bringing to bear a singular combination of media studies, the history of communication, sociology, rhetoric, and literary history, The Connected Condition proposes new accounts of literary difficulty and Romanticism. Above all, this book shows that the Romantic poets have much to teach us about living with the connected condition and the fortunes of literature in it.
For fans of The Kiss Quotient and The Love Hypothesis, The Sizzle Paradox is the next sparkling romantic comedy by Lily Menon. Lyric Bishop feels like a fraud – she’s studying sexual chemistry in romantic partners and what makes for a successful long-term relationship, only she can’t seem to figure it out in her own dating life. The science is sound, but how can she give her expert opinion with no real-world experience? In order to complete her doctoral thesis, she must crack the Sizzle Paradox – it seems the more sexually attractive she finds a guy, the less likely it is to come with an emotional connection; but why? – and to do that she must get the help she desperately needs. Kian Montgomery, her best friend, roommate, and fellow grad student, has no trouble bringing both romance and sizzle to his own relationships. When he offers to tutor Lyric on dating tactics to find a good match, she’s certain it will solve her problems, and in exchange she agrees to set long-term-commitment-averse Kian up with someone different to give his romantic life a much-needed shakeup. But once the two progress with their "tutoring sessions," they start to feel less like the academic exercise they were supposed to be as real feelings develop. Which is a problem, because Lyric and Kian are best friends and absolutely, irrefutably nothing else... Right?
