Lo statuto sociale dell’amore nel Settecento: l’emozione ridefinita da mixité, spazi e diritti

The essay investigates the mutation that occurred in people during the Eighteenth century regarding the expectation of love: the change that took place in this field of feeling had the power to influence people’s choices and also to prefigure one’s future in ways that differed from family logic and social devices. The feeling of love was no longer seen as a passion irreconcilable with the social order, but rather as a path to the realisation of a full life thanks to the spread of a culture of sensitivity capable of influencing every field of human experience, spreading into all social strata. A mutation that, rather than being an ‘emotional refuge’, as suggested by William Reddy, stimulated new practices of urban sociability that focused on the co-presence of the two sexes, against the segregation of the past, which helped the spreading of greater knowledge and the releasing of new emotions and a new sensibility between men and women, also encouraging an awareness of the ‘rights’ of the heart.