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<p> This thesis is an historically based inquiry into the aesthetic function and moral significance of the themes of marriage, fornication, and adultery in Chaucer's poetry about sexual love. Its first aim is to construct a philosophic and historical framework within which to study Chaucer as a love poet and thereby to help dispel the common but fallacious idea that Chaucer's poetic compositions on the subject of love are archetypally and thematically similar to those of the romantic poets of the nineteenth-century. Chaucer's attitude toward love is interpreted as a composite product of the influences of Ovid, St. Augustine, and the Christian Church of the Middle Ages and is shown to be morally incompatible with the idea, popular in the romantic literature of another era, that the world is well lost for love. </p> <p> The first chapter of the thesis is mainly devoted to an investigation of the salient differences between Chaucer's conception of love, which is in essence abstract moral, and impersonal, and the romantic conception, which tends to be emotional, amoral, and highly subjective. This chapter describes the intellectual background of the distinctively medieval traditions of cosmological love, married love, and Ovidian love and attempts to interpret the influence of these traditions on the mind and art of Chaucer. </p> <p> After the first chapter, the focus of discussion becomes much narrower, and descriptive treatment of the history of ideas gives way to close analysis of specific cruxes in love poems like Troilus and Criseyde, the Knight's Tale, and the Parliament of Fowls. These cruxes, which include the problematic function of Chaucer's various apostrophes and invocations to Venus, and the complex moral relationship of Venus to Nature,are examined for their relevance to the question of how Chaucer actually views erotic passion in his great love poetry. The conclusion reached in the second chapter is that the various cruxes treated here can all be resolved by showing that Chaucer consistently subscribes to Augustinian doctrines of nature, grace, and sexual morality. </p> <p> The third and last chapter of the thesis departs from the conceptual approach to love taken in the previous two in that it adopts a more formalistic and aesthetically orientated mode of criticism. However, this chapter, like the preceding one, concentrates on the elucidation of cruxes and supports its generalizations about Chaucer's artistry through close analysis and attention to poetic detail. Chapter 3 deals solely with Troilus and Criseyde, analyzing the concept of "love as an art" to which the poem repeatedly alludes; interpreting dynamics of response in the poem's audience; and discussing the metaphoric association of verbal prevarication with amorous enslavement in the behaviour of Troilus, Criseyde, and Pandarus. The general conclusion of this chapter, as of the others, is that Chaucer was unquestionably a man of his time -- an orthodox member of the Church and a firm follower of the teachings of St. Augustine in matters of art as in ethics. </p> / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

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Psychopathy is a rare and unique disorder, primarily associated with an emotional deficiency and an inclination towards violent antisocial behavior. Among the various symptoms, the affective experience of the incapacity for love has received little empirical attention, despite having been established as one of Cleckley's 16 classic characteristics. Moreover, the role of physiological responding in their romantic experiences has yet to be examined. The proposed study examined physiological reactivity (i.e., heart rate, HR; skin conductance, SC) as a mediator and moderator in the relationship between psychopathic features and romantic experiences (i.e., passionate love, companionate love, Ludus love, relationship satisfaction, relationship history) in college men. As hypothesized, physiological reactivity mediated and moderated the relationship between psychopathic features and romantic experiences. Specifically, low physiological arousal for the partner partially mediated the relationship between psychopathic features and passionate love. Also, it was found that the interaction between low physiological arousal for the significant other and high physiological arousal for the opposite-sex friend moderates the relationship between psychopathic features and deficient romantic experiences. By gaining a better understanding of the impact on their romantic experiences, this study is intended to contribute to improved identification and assessment of psychopathic men. / Ph. D.

Spurred on by the controversy over contraception, the twentieth century became one of most eventful for the history of Catholic thought on human sexuality. The Catholic Church in this century experienced the rise and eventual dominance, at least at the level of the Magisterium, of a personalist approach to Marriage and sexual ethics, an approach which sought to treat of these subjects from the perspective of their relation to personal values, especially the value of love. Of those figures who were most crucial in the development of such a personalist approach, one was Karol Wojtyła. As bishop,archbishop, cardinal and finally pope, Wojtyła (John Paul II) would be involved in some of the most important events of this history, such as the drafting of Vatican IIs Gaudium et Spes and the controversy surrounding Paul VIs <i> Humanae Vitae</i>. <p>This study is intended to further an understanding of Wojtyłas role in this history by investigating his thought on human sexuality. Accurate interpretation of his actions would require knowledge about his convictions, beliefs and reasons for them. This study, however, limits itself to investigating only one of Wojtyłas works, Love and Responsibility, and to asking one specific question of it, what relation is understood to exist between love and sexuality. This investigation leads to several important conclusions. First, Wojtyła has a definite and reasoned belief that sexuality is necessarily related to love. Second, his understanding of sexuality and its relation to love depends on his belief about the nature of love. Third, Wojtyła believes that human sexuality is related to love because a) it is the sexuality of a person and a person is the sort of entity which is able to love and ought to be loved, b) by virtue of the sexual urge attraction (a form of love) arises very easily, c) by sex (male and female) being a limitation or imbalance a special basis is created for love-as-desire (another form of love), and finally d) by sexual intercourse being a union of bodies, intercourse both expresses betrothed love (yet another form of love) and gives it an added perfection.

Spurred on by the controversy over contraception, the twentieth century became one of most eventful for the history of Catholic thought on human sexuality. The Catholic Church in this century experienced the rise and eventual dominance, at least at the level of the Magisterium, of a personalist approach to Marriage and sexual ethics, an approach which sought to treat of these subjects from the perspective of their relation to personal values, especially the value of love. Of those figures who were most crucial in the development of such a personalist approach, one was Karol Wojtyła. As bishop,archbishop, cardinal and finally pope, Wojtyła (John Paul II) would be involved in some of the most important events of this history, such as the drafting of Vatican IIs Gaudium et Spes and the controversy surrounding Paul VIs <i> Humanae Vitae</i>. <p>This study is intended to further an understanding of Wojtyłas role in this history by investigating his thought on human sexuality. Accurate interpretation of his actions would require knowledge about his convictions, beliefs and reasons for them. This study, however, limits itself to investigating only one of Wojtyłas works, Love and Responsibility, and to asking one specific question of it, what relation is understood to exist between love and sexuality. This investigation leads to several important conclusions. First, Wojtyła has a definite and reasoned belief that sexuality is necessarily related to love. Second, his understanding of sexuality and its relation to love depends on his belief about the nature of love. Third, Wojtyła believes that human sexuality is related to love because a) it is the sexuality of a person and a person is the sort of entity which is able to love and ought to be loved, b) by virtue of the sexual urge attraction (a form of love) arises very easily, c) by sex (male and female) being a limitation or imbalance a special basis is created for love-as-desire (another form of love), and finally d) by sexual intercourse being a union of bodies, intercourse both expresses betrothed love (yet another form of love) and gives it an added perfection.

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This paper explores the dialectical concept of love in Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov through Katerina and Grushenka, the heroines, and Dmitri Karamazov. Dostoyevsky's dialectic is most accurately described by the terms Eros and Agape, as defined by Denis de Rougemont in Love in the Western World. Chapter One examines the character of Katerina and establishes that although her love is ostensibly Agape, her most frequent expression of love is Eros. Chapter Two establishes that Grushenka's most frequent expression of love is Agape although ostensibly Eros. Chapter Three demonstrates how each woman personifies a pole of Dmitri Karamazov's inner conflict, and then traces his development with regard to his relationship to each woman.

In this dissertation, I use separation and divorce as the lens through which I examine the impact of modernization and globalization on the intimate lives and the health and well-being of low income women of African descent in rural Northeast Brazil. I argue that trends such as shifts in the gendered division of labor in a growing eco-tourism economy, and the spread of the modern notion of romantic love and companionate marriage through popular telenovelas, are directly related to dramatic increases in separation and divorce in Brazil. I further argue that social inequality affects individual perceptions and experiences of divorce, and the embodied distress low-income Afro Brazilian women endure with marital failure is also an expression of social suffering.

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