Do romantic love and matrimony go together like the proverbial horse and carriage, or are they polar opposites as many writers have claimed? In the first of three talks on the literary treatment of love and marriage, the poet and critic Laurence Lerner ranges from Gottfried von Strassbourg 's version of Tristan and Isolde through Shakespeare to the 19th-century novelists, and he examines their handling of the tension between the emotion and the institution.
(Married Love: Christmas Day)