Against Love

A polemic against love that is “engagingly acerbic ... extremely funny.... A deft indictment of the marital ideal, as well as a celebration of the dissent that constitutes adultery, delivered in pointed daggers of prose” (The New Yorker). Who would dream of being against love? No one. Love is, as everyone knows, a mysterious and all-controlling force, with vast power over our thoughts and life decisions. But is there something a bit worrisome about all this uniformity of opinion? Is this the one subject about which no disagreement will be entertained, about which one truth alone is permissible? Consider that the most powerful organized religions produce the occasional heretic; every ideology has its apostates; even sacred cows find their butchers. Except for love. Hence the necessity for a polemic against it. A polemic is designed to be the prose equivalent of a small explosive device placed under your E-Z-Boy lounger. It won’t injure you (well not severely); it’s just supposed to shake things up and rattle a few convictions.

It’s been a decade since Ava MacDaniel stepped foot on her uncle’s Utah ranch; a decade since she followed her work-obsessed mother to Paris without looking back. Now, as an upand- coming New York painter, Ava’s days are filled with galas on the arm of her gorgeous publicist boyfriend. When she finally gets a chance to open a gallery for underserved artists, Ava’s life couldn’t look more perfect. But her dream comes with a catch: making peace with the estranged family she left behind. Macy Paxton has spent her whole life on the picturesque Utah land. Though she never forgave her cousin for abandoning her, she eventually found love in Ben, a charming soldier. But after Ben went missing during a special forces operation, Macy never quite recovered. Ava’s convinced she’ll please everyone and be back to her life in a New York minute. But when facing the shadows of her past leads her to a captivating stranger, everything becomes more complicated. In her stunning debut novel, Frederic weaves a journey of love, loss, and the bonds of sisterhood. Sometimes, the perfect future can only be found in the broken pieces of the past.

Are we unique as individuals, or are we replaceable? Seventeenth-century English literature pursues these questions through depictions of marriage. The writings studied in this book elevate a love between two individuals who deem each other to be unique to the point of being irreplaceable, and this vocabulary allows writers to put affective pressure on the meaning of marriage as Pauline theology defines it. Stubbornly individual, love threatens to short-circuit marriage's function in directing intimate feelings toward a communal experience of Christ's love. The literary project of testing the meaning of marriage proved to be urgent work throughout the seventeenth century. Monarchy itself was put on trial in this century, and so was the usefulness of marriage in linking Christian belief with the legitimacy of hereditary succession. Starting at the end of the sixteenth century with Edmund Spenser, and then exploring works by William Shakespeare, William Davenant, John Milton, Lucy Hutchinson, and Aphra Behn, Eric Song offers a new account of how notions of unique personhood became embedded in a literary way of thinking and feeling about marriage.

This is all about the love of current time which is badly damaged by many bad things like money, status and most common body attraction.

A collection of poems about marriage by one of our most celebrated poets.

This compelling collection gathers together articles previously published in "The Christian Century" from 1996 to 2008. The result is a cohesive book that unerringly points away from pettiness and selfishness and toward the love Christians are called to exemplify.