Love in the visual arts, intro to the course and some poems at the end!

1. Love Through the Ages
overview

2. Love through the Ages
This final examination syntheses the skills and learning of the whole course. In the
exam, you will study closely unprepared texts from ALL GENRES, chosen across
time and linked by theme. You will compare the extracts in terms of subject matter
and style, using your wider reading to inform your judgements about:
•the ways different writers at different times approach the theme of love
•the ways different readers interpret texts
‘Love’ will include romantic love but will not be restricted to that single definition.
Your reading of love should include:
•all 3 genres (poetry, prose and drama)
•literature written by both men and women
•literature through time (from Chaucer to the present day)
•some non-fiction texts
AO1 AO2 AO3 AO4
7.5% 7.5% 7.5% 7.5%
60% of the total A2 marks
30% of the total A Level marks

3. Unit 3 Examination
The Examination will be a 2 ½ hours written exam with 4 unseen extracts.
There will be two compulsory questions, each question marked out of 40.
Question1 will ask you to compare 2 extracts of the same genre (poetry,
prose or drama). The question will require close reading of the texts as well
as reference to your wider reading of love literature of the same genre
Question 2 will invite you to compare 2 extracts (of the remaining two
genres) on some aspect of love through the ages and how the writers
present this. You will use your wider reading in the same genres as the
extracts to inform your interpretations

4. True or False?
1. Love is a pleasure
2. Love has a civilising and humanising
influence
3. Love does not come of itself; it requires
effort and art to cultivate
4. The psychology of the sexes differs
ideas taken from Ovid’s The Art of Love

5. Love is…
Brainstorm all the different ways in which love
is portrayed, and the role it plays, in fiction and
non-fiction narratives (novels, drama, film,
newspapers and magazine articles of real-life
stories, TV drama).
If you had to describe an object that
symbolised:
•romantic love
•parental love
•lost love
•passionate love
•unrequited love
•self love .......
..............................................what would it be?

6. Researching Key Periods
Your reading of literature of love should start with Chaucer and progress through
time to contemporary writing. You therefore need to be familiar with the ways in
which social, historical and cultural contexts shape the literary traditions, and how
the texts reflect or challenge the contexts in which they are written.
Like all artistic movements, literature tends to swing in
reaction against the previous age.
•Medieval
•Elizabethan & Jacobean
•Restoration
•Augustan
•Romantic
•Victorian & Edwardian
•Modernist
•Post-modernist

7. Love is…
"This is the true measure of love, "Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs,
When we believe that we alone can love, Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes,
That no one could ever have loved so before us, Being vexed, a sea nourished with lovers' tears.
And that no one will ever love in the same way What is it else? A madness most discreet,
after us." A choking gall and a preserving sweet." [Romeo]
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet
"The symptoms produced by this passion as a disease,
according to medical writers as follows: The eye-lids often Love is patient, love is kind and is
twinkle, the eyes are hollow, and yet appear as if full with not jealous;
pleasure: the pulse is not peculiar to the passion... As the love does not brag and is not
force of love prevails, sighs grow deeper; a tremor affects the arrogant, does not act
heart and the pulse... a loss of appetite, a hectic fever, unbecomingly;
melancholy, or perhaps madness, if not death, constitutes it does not seek its own, is not
provoked, does not take into
the sad catastrophe."
account a wrong suffered,
Treasury of Encyclopedia Britannica "Love in Medicine" does not rejoice in
unrighteousness, but rejoices with
"if we feel, we would that another's nerves should vibrate to our own, the truth;
that the beams of their eyes should kindle at once and mix and melt 1 Corinthians 13:4-7,13
into our own, that lips of motionless ice should not reply to lips
quivering and burning with the heart's best blood. This is Love."
Percy Bysshe Shelley Essay on Love

8. Choosing a picture, brainstorm ideas about the image – the
kind of love presented, attitudes to gender, the tone and
perspective on love, HOW it is presented, context and
LINKS to poems you have studied.

9. Love in Art
Venus Botticelli, c. 1482–1486

10. Sacred and Profane Love
1514

11. Titian, Venus with an Organist and a Dog Ca.
1550.

13. 1597-1599

14. Recently Married Couple, Frans Hals,
1622

15. Mr and Mrs Andrews
about 1750, Thomas Gainsborough

17. The Last of England by
Ford Madox Brown, 1855.

18. The Dance of Life, 1900
"the battle between man and woman that
is called love". Munch

19. The Kiss is a discreet expression of Klimt’s emphasis on eroticism and
the liberation therein. The Kiss falls in line with Klimt’s exploration of
fulfilment and the redeeming, transformative power of love and art.

20. William Strang - Bank Holiday - 1912

21. Pablo Picasso The Kiss (1969)

22. Alma Tadema – Ask me no more

23. Chagall - Joy

24. Chagall –
Lovers Blue

25. Fragona
rd - The
Love
Letter

26. Magritte – The
Lovers

27. Eyck – Arnofili
Marriage

28. Psyche Opening
the door to
Cupid’s garden -
Waterhouse

29. Van Gogh –
First Steps

30. Robert
Indiana - Love

31. Watteau - Mezzetin

32. Baglione – Sacred
and Profane Art

33. DeTroy – The
Declaration of
Love

34. Rossetti –
The
Beloved

35. Sophie Anderson –
Love In A Mist

36. Fragment of
Athenian
Vase

37. Pierre – Augustus,
Dance at Bougival

38. Sunset Norman
Rockwell

39. Dance Me To
The End Of Love
- Vettriano

40. Bella Donna

41. The Singing
Butler -
Vettriano

42. Vermeer – Love
Letter

43. Fragonard The Swing

44. American Gothic –
Grant Wood

46. Even after all this time,
the sun never says
to the earth,
"You owe me."
Look what happens
with a love like that -
it lights
the whole world.
...Hafiz

47. Do not say my love was
A ring or a bracelet.
My love is a siege,
Is the daring and headstrong.
Who, searching sail out to their death.
Do not say my love was
A moon.
My love is a burst of sparks.
Nizar Qabbani

48. LETTER FROM UNDER THE SEA – Nazir Qabbani
If you are my friend...
Help me...to leave you
Or if you are my lover...
Help me...so I can be healed of you...
If I knew....
that the ocean is very deep...I would not have swam...
If I knew...how I would end,
I would not have began
I desire you...so teach me not to desire
Love Compared – Nazir
teach me... Qabbani
how to cut the roots of your love from the depths
teach me...
how tears may die in the eyes
and love may commit suicide I do not resemble your other
If you are prophet, lovers, my lady
Cleanse me from this spell
Deliver me from this atheism...
should another give you a cloud
Your love is like atheism...so purify me from this atheism I give you rain
If you are strong... Should he give you a lantern, I
Rescue me from this ocean
For I don't know how to swim will give you the moon
The blue waves...in your eyes
drag me...to the depths Should he give you a branch
blue...
blue...
I will give you the trees
nothing but the color blue And if another gives you a ship
and I have no experience
in love...and no boat... I shall give you the journey.
If I am dear to you
then take my hand
For I am filled with desire...from my
head to my feet
I am breathing under water!
I am drowning...
drowning...
drowning...

49. When I Love You – Nizar Qibbani
When I love you
A new language springs up,
New cities, new countries discovered.
The hours breathe like puppies,
Wheat grows between the pages of books,
Birds fly from your eyes with tiding of honey,
Caravans ride from your breasts carrying Indian herbs,
The mangoes fall all around, the forests catch fire
And Nubian drums beat.
When I love you your breasts shake off their shame,
Turn into lightning and thunder, a sword, a sandy storm.
When I love you the Arab cities leap up and demonstrate
Against the ages of repression
And the ages
Of revenge against the laws of the tribe.
And I, when I love you,
March against ugliness,
Against the kings of salt,
Against the institutionalization of the desert.
And I shall continue to love you until the world flood arrives;
I shall continue to love you untill the world flood arrives.

50. BADLY CHOSEN LOVER – rosemary tonks
Criminal, you took a great piece of my life,
And you took it under false pretences,
That piece of time
-- In the clear muscles of my brain
I have th lens and jug of it!
Books, thoughts, meals, days, and houses,
Half Europe, spent like a coarse banknote,
You took it -- leaving mud and cabbage stumps.
And, Criminal, I damn you for it (very softly).
My spirit broke her fast on you. And, Turk,
You fed her with the breath of your neck
-- In my brain’s clear retina
I have the stolen love behaviour.
Your heart, greedy and tepid, brothel-meat,
Gulped it, like a flunkey with erotica.
And very softly, Criminal, I damn you for it.

51. may i feel said he (e.e. cummings)
may i feel said he
(i'll squeal said she
just once said he)
it's fun said she
(may i touch said he
how much said she
a lot said he)
why not said she
(let's go said he
not too far said she
what's too far said he
where you are said she)
may i stay said he
(which way said she
like this said he
if you kiss said she
may i move said he
is it love said she)
if you're willing said he
(but you're killing said she
but it's life said he
but your wife said she
now said he)
ow said she
(tiptop said he
don't stop said she
oh no said he)
go slow said she
(cccome?said he
ummm said she)
you're divine!said he
(you are Mine said she)

52. If I Could Tell You (W.H. Auden)
Time will say nothing but I told you so,
Time only knows the price we have to pay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.
If we should weep when clowns put on their show,
If we should stumble when musicians play,
Time will say nothing but I told you so.
There are no fortunes to be told, although,
Because I love you more than I can say,
If I could tell you I would let you know.
The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,
There must be reasons why the leaves decay;
Time will say nothing but I told you so.
Perhaps the roses really want to grow,
The vision seriously intends to stay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.
Suppose all the lions get up and go,
And all the brooks and soldiers run away;
Will Time say nothing but I told you so?
If I could tell you I would let you know.

53. Leaning Into The Afternoons (Pablo Neruda)
Leaning into the afternoons I cast my sad nets
towards your oceanic eyes.
There in the highest blaze my solitude lengthens and
flames,
its arms turning like a drowning man's.
I send out red signals across your absent eyes
that move like the sea near a lighthouse.
You keep only darkness, my distant female,
from your regard sometimes the coast of dread emerges.
Leaning into the afternoons I fling my sad nets
to that sea that beats on your marine eyes.
The birds of night peck at the first stars
that flash like my soul when I love you.
The night gallops on its shadowy mare
shedding blue tassels over the land