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Daniele Monticelli, the professor of Italian Studies and Semiotics at the TU Institute of Humanities researches how fiction and other forms of art form our feelings and passions into stories.

The French philosopher Alain Badiou warns that love might become an endangered species of emotion, as it tends to be replaced by looking for matches on dating sites and non-committal relationships.

Nevertheless, how do you explain the fact that love stories in fiction are still as popular as ever?

Let us look at one of the most famous stories – “Romeo and Juliet” by William Shakespeare. What does it tell us? It tells us that falling in love is spontaneous, often caused by a chance meeting, which creates a socially unacceptable bond, which will turn your life upside down.

“Wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name,” Juliet calls to her lover, as their love makes them surpass the impossible, reinvent life not from the viewpoint of identity, but rather diversity.

It has become a sort of universal script of love in fiction, which is repeated in endless stories with slight variations.

Another famous couple, Paolo and Francesca, tell their love story in Dante’s “Inferno”. It all happened as they were reading a book about yet another couple – sir Lancelot and lady Guinevere.

A love story stems another love story, which Francesca tells Dante, and he to us.

Should we deduce that love in fiction is just created to console and help us bear the lovelessness of real life?

On the contrary – fiction helps us recognise love in real life. Love comes often as an unexpected gift, not, as Tammsaare wrote, “When you work hard, love will come.” We must, however, work hard to cherish the gift of love and make it last.

The way of cherishing and making it last must be found and invented by each of us separately, as fiction does not give us exact instructions.