The Romantic

When she is nine-years-old, Louise Kirk's mother disappears, leaving a note that reads only--and incorrectly--"Louise knows how to work the washing machine." It is not long before a strange couple and their adopted son, Abel, move in across the street. Louise quickly grows close with the exotic Mrs. Richter, but saves her stronger, more lasting affections for Mrs. Richter's intelligent son. From this childhood friendship evolves a love that will bind Louise and Abel forever, and though Abel moves away and Louise matures into adulthood, her attachment grows dangerously, fiercely fixed.

History meets memoir in two true-life love stories between two sets of writers--one unfolding in nineteenth century Rome, one in present-day Paris and London--both of which reveal the longings and ambitions of the very contemporary Nell Stevens. In 1857, English novelist Elizabeth Gaskell completed her most famous work: the biography of her dear friend, the recently deceased Charlotte Brontë. As publication loomed, Elizabeth was keen to escape the reviews and, leaving her wholesome, dull minister husband at home, travelled with her daughters to Rome. And it was there that she met the American writer and critic, Charles Eliot Norton. Seventeen years her junior, he was the love of her life. She knew they could never be together--it would be an unthinkable breach--but when she returned home to Mr. Gaskell, she discovered to her horror that while she was gone he had betrayed her--betrayed her work--in a way that she is not sure she can ever forgive. In 2013 Nell Stevens is in a PhD program in London, halfheartedly pursuing a post in academia to keep her afloat while she follows her true vocation as a writer. Her dissertation on the artistic expatriate community of nineteenth-century Rome isn't quite coming together. But scholarly questions take a back seat to her budding romance with Max, a soulful American with an unfinished screenplay. That is, until their relationship begins to founder, and the echoes between Nell's life and that of her historical subject become too strong to ignore. As these two storylines meet up in delightful, funny, and unexpected ways, The Victorian and the Romantic evokes the bittersweet ache of lost love and the consolations of female writerly ambition.

To what extent are our most romantic moments determined by the portrayal of love in film and on TV? Is a walk on a moonlit beach a moment of perfect romance or simply a simulation of the familiar ideal seen again and again on billboards and movie screens? In her unique study of American love in the twentieth century, Eva Illouz unravels the mass of images that define our ideas of love and romance, revealing that the experience of "true" love is deeply embedded in the experience of consumer capitalism. Illouz studies how individual conceptions of love overlap with the world of clichés and images she calls the "Romantic Utopia." This utopia lives in the collective imagination of the nation and is built on images that unite amorous and economic activities in the rituals of dating, lovemaking, and marriage. Since the early 1900s, advertisers have tied the purchase of beauty products, sports cars, diet drinks, and snack foods to success in love and happiness. Illouz reveals that, ultimately, every cliché of romance—from an intimate dinner to a dozen red roses—is constructed by advertising and media images that preach a democratic ethos of consumption: material goods and happiness are available to all. Engaging and witty, Illouz's study begins with readings of ads, songs, films, and other public representations of romance and concludes with individual interviews in order to analyze the ways in which mass messages are internalized. Combining extensive historical research, interviews, and postmodern social theory, Illouz brings an impressive scholarship to her fascinating portrait of love in America.

'Kate Holden's bestselling memoir In My Skin told the gripping story of her slide into heroin addiction and prostitution and her gruelling recovery. The Romantic tells what happened next. When Kate decides to leave her past behind in Melbourne, it is the beginning of a new journey. In the ruins of Rome and the piazzas of Naples, through poetry and passion, in strange streets and strange beds, she hopes to find truth. But this pilgrimage requires courage: in Italy she may find true love, or lose her heart altogether. Or even find herself. Sexy, dark, and intoxicating, The Romantic asks: when you ve traded in sex, what does it cost to love others? and yourself A sensual, sexy, brutally honest memoir.' Marie Claire'.

The Romanticism that emerged after the American and French revolutions of 1776 and 1789 represented a new flowering of the imagination and the spirit, and a celebration of the soul of humanity with its capacity for love. This extraordinary collection sets the acknowledged genius of poems such as Blake's 'Tyger', Coleridge's 'Khubla Khan' and Shelley's 'Ozymandias' alongside verse from less familiar figures and women poets such as Charlotte Smith and Mary Robinson. We also see familiar poets in an unaccustomed light, as Blake, Wordsworth and Shelley demonstrate their comic skills, while Coleridge, Keats and Clare explore the Gothic and surreal.

Madness and the Romantic Poet examines the longstanding and enduringly popular idea that poetry is connected to madness and mental illness. The idea goes back to classical antiquity, but it was given new life at the turn of the nineteenth century. The book offers a new and much more complete history of its development than has previously been attempted, alongside important associated ideas about individual genius, creativity, the emotions, rationality, and the mind in extreme states or disorder - ideas that have been pervasive in modern popular culture. More specifically, the book tells the story of the initial growth and wider dissemination of the idea of the 'Romantic mad poet' in the nineteenth century, how (and why) this idea became so popular, and how it interacted with the very different fortunes in reception and reputation of Romantic poets, their poetry, and attacks on or defences of Romanticism as a cultural trend generally - again leaving a popular legacy that endured into the twentieth century. Material covered includes nineteenth-century journalism, early literary criticism, biography, medical and psychiatric literature, and poetry. A wide range of scientific (and pseudoscientific) thinkers are discussed alongside major Romantic authors, including Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, Hazlitt, Lamb, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Keats, Byron, and John Clare. Using this array of sources and figures, the book asks: was the Romantic mad genius just a sentimental stereotype or a romantic myth? Or does its long popularity tell us something serious about Romanticism and the role it has played, or has been given, in modern culture?

The romantic lives of emerging adults are often baffling and contradictory. While they prize committed and authentic relationships, they appear to be reluctant participants. They prefer to foster ambiguity in their romantic relationships, even as they value honesty and clarity. There is, at once, a valuing of long-term as well as a decentering of romantic relationships. Although our current understanding is incomplete, this text grapples with these perplexing questions. In attempting to understand emerging adults and their romantic lives, researchers must consider the challenging economic conditions in which today's emerging adults find themselves. With an emphasis on commitment and sacrifice and their centrality to one's readiness for a long-term relationship, this book reviews the main milestones in transitioning from an "I" identity to a "we" identity and discusses the concepts of choice and risk. Further, the book examines structures such as asymmetrically committed relationships, cohabitation, and marriage through the lens of commitment, risk, and risk avoidance. Probing extensively into the romantic lives of emerging adults -- their attitudes, values and expectations -- this text examines some of the developmental and contextual realities against which romantic attachment must be viewed. Critical topics such as casual and sexual experiences and relationships, integration of work and love, breakups, marriage, going solo, and social media and its influences are considered. The commonality and the individuality of the emerging adults presented throughout this text contribute to a rich understanding of emerging adults and how they live and love.

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.