Combining the history of ideas and the history of emotions, this work explores the convergence between political and cultural ideas of Europe and the idea of love in the period between the two world wars. It investigates European unity from a political viewpoint, but also from cultural and symbolic ones, taking a critical stand towards Euro-centricism. Chapters focus on single texts, including bestselling novels, and artworks reviving the myth of Europa and the bull, set in the context of debates on marriage, sex and love in the western world. These alternate with chapters combining intellectual and cultural history with critical explorations of how historians, politicians and psychologists analyzed the crisis of European civilization.
Author(s): Luisa Passerini
Publisher: New York University Press
Year: 1999
Language: English
Pages: x+358
City: New York
List of Illustrations, vi
Acknowledgements, vii
Introduction, 1
1. Europa in East Anglia, 27
—Europa’s Beast by Ralph H. Mottram, 27
—A ‘European’ love story, 32
—Modern men, 38
—Visuality, 43
—Olive/Europa/Europe, 46
2. Ideas of Europe, 52
—The dream of the United States of Europe, 52
—Dawson’s Christian Community, 64
—Minds between war and peace: psycho-analysts and psychologists on the crisis of European civilisation, 81
3. New Europe 105
—Mitrinovic and Orage, 105
—The Adler Society, 119
—The New Europe group and the New Britain movement, 126
—Eutopia or Atlantis?, 137
4. Europa Reappears From a New East, 149
—Briffault’s The Mothers, 149
—Europa and Europa in Limbo, 160
—Life and death of a nomadic subject, 174
5. Provencal Love – The Allegory of Love by C.S. Lewis, 188
—A long dispute: the Europeanness of courtly love, 201
—Travelling to Provence, 213
6. Between Culture and Politics, 222
—The future of the European spirit, 222
—Mosley and the British Union of Fascists, 234
—An impossible task (Margaret Storm Jameson), 239
—‘In Spain is Europe’, 247
—‘Song of the West’ (Margaret Ormiston Curie), 255
—Destiny of a myth: images of Europa and the bull, 260
—Active solidarity (Friends of Europe and Federal Union), 267
7. ‘I Love You More Than My Nationality’, 280
Epilogue, 307
Sources and References, 319
Index, 345
