“There Are as Many Kinds of Love as There are Hearts”: Age Gap Relationships in Literature and Cultural Attitudes

Chesnokova, Anna and van Peer, Willie (2021) “There Are as Many Kinds of Love as There are Hearts”: Age Gap Relationships in Literature and Cultural Attitudes Колективна (три і більше авторів). International Handbook of Love: monograph. Springer, Cham.

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Abstract

Love comes in many forms, as we all know and as the quote from Anna Karenina by Tolstoy holds. Some forms are more frequent than others. As a consequence, less frequent forms may be either tolerated or dismissed as deviant, and therefore socially sanctioned. And different cultures may deal with such forms very differently. In this chapter we look at one form that is less frequent, namely age-gap relations: love relations between either an older man and a considerably younger woman, or vice versa: an older woman and a considerably younger man. Since it may be expected that nations differ in their attitudes toward such relationships, we investigated two that are (geographically and culturally) wide apart: Brazil and Ukraine. We offer some examples of empirical methods (Empirical methods aim at knowledge that comes from observation and experience, i.e., evidence gathered through the senses that can be analyzed independently by anyone wishing to re-analyze the data gathered.) with which to investigate short time and longitudinal effects of confronting fictional love stories. We report a case study, in which we checked how social views on intimate relationships involving a substantial age difference between partners were influenced by reading literary passages from canonical literature, focusing on age-gap relationships. The results cast light on the views on age-gap relations in these respective cultures and thereby highlight their national mentality. Additionally, the findings lend support to the idea that reading literature influences human attitudes.

Item Type:	Monograph (Колективна (три і більше авторів))
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Love; age-gap relationships; empirical research; cultural attitudes; literary reading; effects of reading on perceptions of love
Subjects:	Це архівна тематика Київського університету імені Бориса Грінченка > Статті у наукометричних базах > Scopus Це архівна тематика Київського університету імені Бориса Грінченка > Монографії > Видані за кордоном (окрім країн СНД)
Divisions:	Це архівні підрозділи Київського університету імені Бориса Грінченка > Кафедра англійської філології та перекладу
Depositing User:	Анна Вадимовна Чеснокова
Date Deposited:	11 May 2021 11:30
Last Modified:	05 Apr 2023 08:58
URI:	https://elibrary.kubg.edu.ua/id/eprint/36312

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