Choose three (3) from the following six prompts to answer and thoughtfully discuss. Include specifics to support your points.  

Plan on 75 – 100 of your own words for each answer.  Total:  300 or more words. Formatting guidelines below.

Discussion Prompts (choose 3 to answer).

1. What is the true definition of love? Several different concepts – eros, agape, friendship, romantic love – compete to define true love.  Which concept(s) for you, best capture the true definition of love?.  Explain in specific ways why you think so.

2. One of the ways Platonic love has been defined is as a ladder beginning with delight in a physical union and leading upward to the oneness of two minds. Do you believe this concept is still valid?  Is it just a fancy name for lust?  Or . . . . ?

3. Today there are feminist liberation movements, male breadwinners who frequently need the assistance from working wives, and househusbands in increasing numbers. Cite evidence that the Victorian model is still around, or that it appears to have vanished altogether.

4. Tap your creative energies. Write a little story in which two of the characters or authors you have met in this chapter meet each other and have a conversation about love.  What would Romeo say to Don Giovanni (don Juan); What might Congreve’s Mirabell say to Juliet? What would Scheherazade talk about with Aristotle?

5. Still tapping your creative energies, write a dialogue between two people who both use “love” when they refer to their relationship, yet who somehow make it clear to us readers that each is operating according to a different definition of the work.

6. Does romantic love still figure in your expectations of a relationship? Or a marriage? Or both? Is it only a figment of the imagination? Or . . . . ?

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