February 14th, 2008 at 10:26 am
Valentine’s Day Reading
Happy Valentine’s Day.
There are lots of modern self-help books out there to analyze your relationships and make you a better person, but we prefer to look backwards in time to the tried and true masters that stand the test of time. Here we offer you some classic works on love in celebration of the holiday:
Poems of Love and War: From the Eight Anthologies and the Ten Long Poems of Classical Tamil
Translated by A. K. Ramanujan
Ah, no one does love like the poets, and among poets, the anonymous scribes of ancient India were unsurpassed in their descriptions of romance. We particularly like the combination of love and war poems here, since so often courtship is conducted as a military campaign.
The Art of Courtly Love
Andreas Capellanus
If the poets are supreme at love, then the singers are not far behind. This unabridged edition of The Art of Courtly Love collects the songs popularized by the troubadours of southern France in the twelfth century. Ooooh, French songs…even better.
Shakespeare on Love and Lust
Maurice Charney
From Romeo and Juliet, the beautiful haunting love sonnets, and the comedy of foolish lovers in A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Shakespeare has influenced so much of the language and popular imagery associated with love. Learn from the master himself.