Amour Fou and Crazy In Love?. Literature‘s Take on Uncontrollable Passion as a Universal Aspect of the Human Condition Markus Schleich Saarland University, Großherzog Friedrich Straße 61, 66111 Saarbrücken, Germany
[email protected] Amour Fou is a universal literary topos, which originates in ancient Greece and survived until the beginning of the 20th century. It lost a lot of its attraction within the context of postmodernism, medical findings and popular culture. This paper seeks to explore its re-emergence within a new visual media. Keywords: thematology / love / passion /postmodernism / popular culture / intermediality Breton’s L’ Amour Fou and the History of an Uncontrollable Passion No discussion concerned with Amour Fou can avoid Andre Breton’s seminal essay of the same name (cf. Kern 00:10). His obtuse text, which is an utmost bizarre1 combination of dream, short story, poetry, autobiogra- phy, travel documentary, manifesto2 and photography is often seen as the starting point of Amour Fou3 and is anything but an easy read.4 Kuon and Kern deemed it “an absolute, free, revolutionary, scandalous tale of love against all norms and rationality” (1), which Breton claims es- pecially for the surrealism. Similarly, Oliver Jahraus tried to define Amour Fou in his monograph Amour Fou. Die Erzählung der Amour Fou in Literatur, Oper, Film from 2004 by stating that: What are integral elements of Amour Fou? Is there a set of rules or regularities? There are some models, but in general Amour Fou is free just like love itself. Usually, there are two partners, infected by Amour Fou.