El amor en español

This course will visit a series of famous, colorful and controversial couples (novios, esposos y amantes) from the literature and history of Spain and Latin America. We will consider such themes as courtly love, erotic love, commonplaces about love and distortions of them, the degradation of idealized love, and the renunciation of human love in favor of divine love in the medieval and Renaissance periods. We will also address contemporary rites of passage in the formation of couples, traditional and modern views of love and marriage, as well as the “death of the couple,” love and melancholy, melodrama and hysteria.