The paradox of love / Pascal Bruckner ; translated by Steven Rendall.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bruckner, Pascal.

Contributor:

Golsan, Richard.

Randall, Steven.

Standardized Title:

Paradoxe amoureux. English

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Love.

Man-woman relationships.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (273 p.)

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton : Princeton University Press, c2012.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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. But as Pascal Bruckner, one of France's leading writers, argues in this lively and provocative reflection on the contradictions of modern love, our new freedoms have also brought new burdens and rules--without, however, wiping out the old rules, emotions, desires, 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--a best seller in France--exposes and dissects these paradoxes. With his customary brilliance and wit, Bruckner traces the roots of sexual liberation back to the Enlightenment in order to explain love's supreme paradox, epitomized by the 1960's 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.? Mixing irony and optimism, Bruckner argues that, when it comes to love, we should side neither with the revolutionaries nor the reactionaries. Rather, taking love and ourselves as we are, we should realize that love makes no progress and that its messiness, surprises, and paradoxes are not merely the sources of its pain--but also of its pleasure and glory.

Contents:

A great dream of redemption

Liberating the human heart

Seduction as a market

I love you : weakness and capture

Idyll and discord

The noble challenge of marriage for love

Fluctuating loyalties

The pleasures and servitudes of living together

The carnal wonder

Is there a sexual revolution?

Toward a bankruptcy of eros?

The ideology of love

Persecution in the name of love: christianity and communism

Marcel proust's slippers

Epilogue : don't be ashamed!.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-283-43970-0

9786613439703

1-4008-4185-2

OCLC:

773566844