The Making of Romantic Love ─ Longing and Sexuality in Europe, South Asia, and Japan, 900-1200 CE

In The Making of Romantic Love, William M. Reddy strikes out on an international exploration of love, contrasting the medieval development of romantic love in Europe with contemporaneous eastern traditions in Bengal and Orissa, and in Heian Japan. In this comparative framework, Reddy tells an appealing tale about the rise and fall of various practices of longing, underscoring the uniqueness of the European concept of sexual desire

"Let the debates begin! Drawing on an astonishing panoply of sources, from European courtly and troubadour literature to Heian Japanese poetry, from canon law to Puri temple dancing. William M. Reddy's important new book, The Making of Romantic Love, challenges our basic assumptions about eroticism, heroism, the nature of marriages, and the legacy of the Middle Ages in modern culture. Is there a `sex drive'? Or is this, too, a Western construct? Like one of Reddy's `emotives,' reading this impressive study will leave you a different person."---Barbara H. Rosenwein, Loyola University Chicago

"The Making of Romantic Love is the first serious attempt to situate three richly documented traditions of romantic love --- developed in medieval France, India, and Japan --- from a critically informed, yet historically sensitive, comparative perspective. William Reddy's analyses range across contexts with impressive dexterity and erudition bringing brilliant insight to these cultural formations and connecting to the wider history of emotions and sexuality. The book will be as relevant to historians and literary scholars as to cultural critics and anthropologists."---Daud Ali, University of Pennsylvania

William M. Reddy is the William T. Laprade Professor of History anil professor of cultural anthropology at Duke University. He is the author of a number of historical works, including The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions