The Amorous Heart: An Unconventional History of Love by Marilyn Yalom (review)

IF 0.1 4区历史学 0 MEDIEVAL & RENAISSANCE STUDIES

PARERGON Pub Date : 2024-08-23 DOI:10.1353/pgn.2024.a935366

Bronwyn Reddan

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Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:

The Amorous Heart: An Unconventional History of Love by Marilyn Yalom
Bronwyn Reddan

Yalom, Marilyn, The Amorous Heart: An Unconventional History of Love, New York, Basic Books, 2018; hardback; pp. vii, 277; 32 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. US $16.99; ISBN 9780465094714.

The iconography of the heart as a symbol of romantic love has a long history in Western culture. In The Amorous Heart: An Unconventional History of Love, Marilyn Yalom surveys the meaning of the heart metaphor and the development of its visual lexicon from antiquity to contemporary popular culture. Identifying [End Page 344] the ancient Egyptian belief that the heart was 'the seat of the soul' (p. 2) as her starting point, Yalom traces an association between the heart and love, and the development of the heart icon, drawing on examples from religious thought, literary and philosophical traditions, decorative and visual arts cultures, and social rituals. In twenty short chapters with black and white illustrations, Yalom's interdisciplinary study focuses mainly on canonical examples of heart-centred discourse and imagery from Western culture, including poetry by Sappho, Ovid, Chrétien de Troyes, and Dante Alighieri; Renaissance art depicting Venus and Cupid; literary texts by William Shakespeare, Samuel Richardson, Jane Austen, George Sand, and Charlotte Brontë; and philosophical and medical theories by Aristotle, Galen, Andreas Vesalius, William Harvey, René Descartes, Blaise Pascal, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke. Where lesser-known figures such as Saint Gertrude the Great of Helfta (1256–1302) and Francesco da Barberino (born as Francesco di Neri di Ranuccio in Tuscany in 1264) appear, they are included as contemporaneous examples of otherwise well-known heart-centred iconography: the Sacred Heart of Jesus for Saint Gertrude and the figure of Cupid for Barberino. A single chapter on Arabic songs from the pre-Islamic period focuses on non-Western sources; examples of the iconography of the religious heart are drawn primarily from Catholic devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and Protestant and Catholic responses to this heart iconography during the Reformation. These examples suggest that the book's subtitle, 'An Unconventional History of Love', is perhaps intended to speak more to a popular audience unfamiliar with scholarship on the heart as a significant metaphorical and iconographical symbol. Yalom's engaging style does mean, however, that the book offers an accessible survey of key shifts in the cultural history of the heart as a symbol of multiple kinds of love in Western culture. [End Page 345]

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多情的心》：玛丽莲-雅洛姆（Marilyn Yalom）的《非传统的爱情史》（评论

以下是内容的简要摘录，以代替摘要：评论者：多情的心：玛丽莲-雅洛姆著，布朗温-雷丹译，玛丽莲-雅洛姆，《多情的心》：一部非常规的爱情史》，纽约，基础书局，2018；精装本；第vii页，第277页；32幅黑白插图；零售价16.99美元；ISBN 9780465094714。心作为浪漫爱情的象征，在西方文化中源远流长。在《多情的心》一书中：在《多情的心：一部非传统的爱情史》一书中，玛丽莲-雅洛姆探究了心的隐喻的含义及其从古代到当代流行文化的视觉词汇的发展。雅洛姆以古埃及人认为心脏是 "灵魂之所在"（第 2 页）为出发点，通过宗教思想、文学和哲学传统、装饰和视觉艺术文化以及社会仪式中的实例，追溯了心脏与爱之间的关联以及心脏图标的发展。雅洛姆的跨学科研究主要侧重于西方文化中以心为中心的话语和意象的经典范例，包括萨福（Sappho）、奥维德（Ovid）、克雷蒂安-德-特鲁瓦（Chrétien de Troyes）和但丁-阿利吉耶里（Dante Alighieri）的诗歌，共分为 20 个简短章节，并配有黑白插图；文艺复兴时期描绘维纳斯和丘比特的艺术作品；威廉-莎士比亚、塞缪尔-理查森、简-奥斯汀、乔治-桑和夏洛特-勃朗特的文学作品；以及亚里士多德、盖伦、安德烈亚斯-维萨留斯、威廉-哈维、勒内-笛卡尔、布莱斯-帕斯卡、托马斯-霍布斯和约翰-洛克的哲学和医学理论。在一些鲜为人知的人物中，如赫尔夫塔的圣格特鲁德大帝（1256-1302 年）和弗朗切斯科-达-巴尔贝里诺（1264 年生于托斯卡纳，原名弗朗切斯科-迪-内里-迪-拉努奇奥），他们的作品被收录为以心脏为中心的著名圣像的同期范例：圣格特鲁德的耶稣圣心和巴尔贝里诺的丘比特形象。书中有一章介绍了伊斯兰教之前的阿拉伯歌曲，重点是非西方的资料来源；宗教心脏圣像的例子主要来自天主教对耶稣圣心和圣母无玷之心的虔诚，以及新教和天主教在宗教改革期间对这种心脏圣像的回应。这些例子表明，本书的副标题 "一部非常规的爱的历史 "也许是为了更多地向不熟悉心脏这一重要隐喻和圣像符号的大众读者讲述。然而，雅洛姆引人入胜的文风确实意味着，该书提供了对作为西方文化中多种爱的象征的心在文化史上的关键转变的通俗考察。[第 345 页完] 布朗温-雷丹-迪肯大学版权所有 © 2024 布朗温-雷丹 ...

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PARERGON MEDIEVAL & RENAISSANCE STUDIES-

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期刊介绍： Parergon publishes articles and book reviews on all aspects of medieval and early modern studies. It has a particular focus on research which takes new approaches and crosses traditional disciplinary boundaries. Fully refereed and with an international Advisory Board, Parergon is the Southern Hemisphere"s leading journal for early European research. It is published by the Australian and New Zealand Association of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (Inc.) and has close links with the ARC Network for Early European Research.