Culture and Love Essay

The concept of love is perhaps of the widely defined and yet loosely given that concrete meaning. This is due to the fact that there are many ways that people define what love is in as much as there are many ways that people can show love. One of the strongest influences on love is culture. The way we show love can depend on our culture so that how we reciprocate love is also dictated by culture. Indeed, love and culture has defined meaning to each other and have, in many ways certain connectivity that adds meaning to each other. This is the reason why, the culture of love in many countries differ from each other. There would always be distinct features of love and of culture that define love in these countries. For example, in an article by Nevitt entitled, â€Å"Art and Culture of Love in Seventeenth-Century Holland†, he defined how the culture of love was during the seventeenth century in Holland by examining texts and artworks that described how love was manifested during that time, including courtship and how love is manifested. The concept of courtship is perhaps one that differs from one culture to the other. This is true because as one culture believes in the concept and importance of courtship, others simply do not. Nevitt interpreted these works which according to him show â€Å"how they both reflect and shaped the experience of love†. The thing portrayed in the paintings for example, is taken in the â€Å"context of the contemporary culture of love which manifested itself in the social practices of courtship and in a variety of amatory texts† (Nevitt). These paintings are very significant as it would have no inspiration for its contents if there would be no true meaning to it as shown and seen in the community that shower each other with love. Work Cited Nevitt, Rodney. â€Å"Art and the Culture of Love in Seventeenth-Century Holland. † 24 June 2009 .