Love vs. Friendship

The paper provides the reader with new perspective, and insights on the subjects of love and friendship: the difference between the two, and how they connect and relate to each other. The author utilizes various poems in exploring this matter, such as those of Shakespeare, Thomas Carlyle, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Emily Bronte.

From the Paper:

“Everyday life is dependent upon one?s relationships with others around them. This is evident in routine encounters with mail carriers, bank tellers, and neighborhood grocers to more intimate experiences with family and friends. These relationships seem to run along a complex continuum — from casual business connections to friendships and family relations to passionate, romantic love. It is at this latter extreme where the defining lines get fuzzy ? where strong emotions run rampant and often cloud conventional definitions of friendship and love.

Is it always possible to distinguish one from the other, and where does one draw the line? Poets have long been trying to tackle these issues and offer a variety of insights and perspectives on friendship and love.”