WHAT IS THIS THING CALLED LOVE - EMOTIONAL SCENARIOS IN HISTORICAL-PERSPECTIVE

From a social-constructionist standpoint, emotional expressions are co nstituents of lived narratives, and gain their meaning from their posi tion within these narratives. These special forms of narrative, termed emotional scenarios, are themselves lodged within a broader cultural and historical landscape. This article compares major features of roma ntic love scenarios as they have changed from 19th century romanticist culture, through 20th century modernism, and into the contemporary po stmodern context. We identify major ways in which the individual parti cipant in romantic scenarios may identify the self, gender variations in performance, the character of sequencing in the scenario, and the v ocabulary of emotional expression as these have evolved over the past century. Such transformations allow enormous freedom of expression to the contemporary ''romantic,'' but also result in simultaneous loss in both the sense of authenticity and security.