Eros: A History of Love from Ancient Greece to the Renaissance

4 credits · Undergraduate

What is love? An instinct, a thing of nature? Or an idea, a product of culture? European philosophers since Plato have sought answers to these questions, advancing in the process various theories about the relationship between nature, culture, and the human condition. This class considers these theories as a starting point of an historical exploration of love as represented in a variety of cultural artifacts from ancient Greece through the Middle Ages. Among them are the poetry of Sappho and Ovid; Greek and Roman sculpture; ancient, Byzantine, and medieval romances; marriage chests and wedding hymns; the letters of Abelard and Eloise; the New Testament and Augustine’s The City of God.