E-Book Overview
You are at a dinner with someone attractive. She suddenly kisses you. Or he leans unexpectedly across the table and caresses your thigh. Whatever. You know the kind of encounter and the range of possible responses. Consider the kiss. What does it mean, and where does it lead? Does kissing necessarily imply more, and if so how much? These and similar questions of amorous ethics and erotic disquisition are the central to our everyday intimate public lives and they are the lost object of the law of love, the lex amatoria collated and presented here.
E-Book Content
The Laws of Love A Brief Historical and Practical Manual Peter Goodrich Language, Discourse, Society General Editors: Stephen Heath, Colin MacCabe and Denise Riley Selected published titles: Peter Goodrich THE LAWS OF LOVE A Brief Historical and Practical Manual Ashley Tauchert ROMANCING JANE AUSTEN Narrative, Realism, and the Possibility of a Happy Ending Reena Dube SATYAJIT RAY’S THE CHESS PLAYERS AND POSTCOLONIAL THEORY Culture, Labour and the Value of Alterity John Anthony Tercier THE CONTEMPORARY DEATHBED The Ultimate Rush Erica Sheen and Lorna Hutson LITERATURE, POLITICS AND LAW IN RENAISSANCE ENGLAND Jean-Jacques Lecercle and Denise Riley THE FORCE OF LANGUAGE Geoff Gilbert BEFORE MODERNISM WAS Modern History and the Constituency of Writing Stephen Heath, Colin MacCabe and Denise Riley (editors) THE LANGUAGE, DISCOURSE, SOCIETY READER Michael O’Pray FILM, FORM AND PHANTASY Adrian Stokes and Film Aesthetics James A. Snead, edited by Kara Keeling, Colin MacCabe and Cornel West RACIST TRACES AND OTHER WRITINGS European Pedigrees/African Contagions Patrizia Lombardo CITIES, WORDS AND IMAGES Colin MacCabe JAMES JOYCE AND THE REVOLUTION OF THE WORD Second edition Moustapha Safouan SPEECH OR DEATH? Language as Social Order: A Psychoanalytic Study Jean-Jacques Lecercle DELEUZE AND LANGUAGE Piers Gray, edited by Colin MacCabe and Victoria Rothschild STALIN ON LINGUISTICS AND OTHER ESSAYS Geoffrey Ward STATUTES OF LIBERTY The New York School of Poets Moustapha Safouan JACQUES LACAN AND THE QUESTION OF PSYCHOANALYTIC TRAINING (Translated and introduced by Jacqueline Rose) Stanley Shostak THE DEATH OF LIFE The Legacy of Molecular Biology Elizabeth Cowie REPRESENTING THE WOMAN Cinema and Psychoanalysis Raymond Tallis NOT SAUSSURE A Critique of Post-Saussurean Literary Theory Laura Mulvey VISUAL AND OTHER PLEASURES Ian Hunter CULTURE AND GOVERNMENT The Emergence of Literary Education Denise Riley ‘AM I THAT NAME?’ Feminism and the Category of ‘Women’ in History Mary Ann Doane The DESIRE TO DESIRE The Woman’s Film of the 1940s Language, Discourse, Society Series Standing Order ISBN 0-333-71482-2 (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England The Laws of Love A Brief Historical and Practical Manual Peter Goodrich © Peter Goodrich 2007 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the autho