Emanuele Lugli (Stanford, Art History) presents “Love at First Sight: from Medieval Fiction to Real-Life Experience”

This talk is a little different from the others. As it's St. Valentine's Day, we delve into the origins and evolutions of "love at first sight." While Geoffrey Chaucer introduced the phrase, it was figures like Enea Silvio Piccolomini, author of "De duobus amantibus historia," and Johannes Herwagen, the printer of "Aehtiopica," who popularized it across early modern Europe. Dr. Emanuele Lugli (Stanford University), who is writing a book on love at first sight, unveils pivotal moments in its global history, revealing how it transcended mere literary convention to captivate artists, philosophers, and eventually scientists. Rather than a narrative trope, love at first sight emerges as a "form," a time-bending compound of elements that has fascinated thinkers for both its simplicity and its capacity to disrupt rational thinking.