Romantic Love and Personal Beauty

by Henry T. Finck

Their development, causal relations, historic and national peculiarities

Henry T. Finck, a New York music critic, set out in Romantic Love and Personal Beauty to show that romantic love, far from being eternal and universal, is a modern sentiment that developed slowly over history. He begins with the attractions of chemistry and the plant world, then distinguishes the many kinds of affection, from love of animals and parental and filial love to friendship, before analyzing romantic love itself through its components, including individual preference, jealousy, coyness and sympathy. Later sections trace love among animals and so-called primitive peoples, in Egypt, Greece and Rome, through chivalry, Dante and Shakespeare, to modern courtship. The tone is learned and opinionated, and some racial judgments reflect the prejudices of the time. The full text is available to read online in your browser on Vinteuil, and the first chapter is free.