Marilyn Yalom

Presents The Amorous Heart: An Unconventional History of Love.

Saturday, February 10, 2018 - 3:00pm

The symmetrical, exuberant heart is everywhere: it gives shape to candy, pendants, the frothy milk on top of a cappuccino, and much else. How can we explain the ubiquity of what might be the most recognizable symbol in the world? In The Amorous Heart, Yalom tracks the heart metaphor and heart iconography across two thousand years, through Christian theology, pagan love poetry, medieval painting, Shakespearean drama, Enlightenment science, and into the present. She argues that the symbol reveals a tension between love as romantic and sexual on the one hand, and as religious and spiritual on the other. Ultimately, the heart symbol is a guide to the astonishing variety of human affections, from the erotic to the chaste and from the unrequited to the conjugal.

Marilyn Yalom is a senior scholar at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University, and the author of How the French Invented Love, among other books. She lives in Palo Alto with her husband, Irvin.
Event address: 
2904 College Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94705
The Amorous Heart: An Unconventional History of Love By Marilyn Yalom Cover Image
$27.00
Email or call for price
ISBN: 9780465094707
Published: Basic Books - January 9th, 2018