Beauty and the Beast. The Dark Sides of Love
| Autor: | Constantinos V. Proimos |
|---|---|
| Jazyk: | German<br />English<br />French<br />Slovenian |
| Rok vydání: | 2022 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Phainomena, Vol 31, Iss 120-121, Pp 467-484 (2022) |
| Druh dokumentu: | article |
| ISSN: | 1318-3362 2232-6650 |
| DOI: | 10.32022/PHI31.2022.120-121.21 |
| Popis: | My paper departs from the classic French fairy tale authored by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve about a handsome prince turned into a hideous beast by a magic spell that only love could break. The Beauty is a beautiful, young, albeit poor woman who eventually falls in love with the Beast and frees the prince from him. By pairing beauty with ugliness and attraction with repulsion, the fairytale allows introspection into the phenomenon of love, which is the natural and appropriate response to Beauty, according to Plato. I am reading the story of the Beauty and the Beast together with Alexander Nehamas’s Neoplatonist book Only a Promise of Happiness. The Place of Beauty in a World of Art trying, first, to establish who the Beauty is as the sovereign and who the Beast, and then inquire into the adventurous liaison of the couple. Finally, I argue that beauty not only promises happiness, as Stendhal’s famous quote states, but also threatens its lovers with misery, frustration, and disorientation. Furthermore, in all love affairs, beauty alternates with ugliness, i.e., the one replaces the other, exactly as the Prince becomes the Beast only to turn again into a Prince, ad infinitum, thus representing desire and its psychic palimpsest. |
| Databáze: | Directory of Open Access Journals |
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