Love’s Litany by Kevin Kopelson

The first extensive analysis of erotic philosophy and homosexuality in the modern period, showing how nineteenth-century ideas of love shaped twentieth-century lesbian and gay subjectivity. Kopelson focuses on four features of romantic love: complementary merger, the idea that opposites attract; love-death, love as fatal union; Wertherism, love bound to sadness, solitude and suicide; and Stendhal's 'crystallization,' the belief that the beloved is perfect.