I may be obsessing as I’m currently teaching a course on medieval literature, central theme ADVENTURE, with a heavy emphasis on Romance romance. By sheer good luck (and the Olympic Gods) we managed not to be working on any form, semblance, or mythostereotypification of The R-Word when V-Day struck. But the following incorporates—and O, if I may digress to drool a moment, what a fine embodiment—every element of romance stricto sensu:
Image at top of classic love-triangle: Dante, Inferno. Canto V, lines 127-38. Paolo and Francesca and book/Galeotto. Image © Michael Mazur and Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1993/2001
