Are there love and friendship after marriage? Or, in the words of Jean Hagstrum, Is there an ideal of marital friendship in Western culture? Those questions are central to several 1987 conferences at the National Humanities Center which Hagstrum helped to coordinate. His books include Sex and Sensibility: Ideal and Erotic Love from Milton to Mozart and Romantic Body: Love and Sexuality in Keats, Wordsworth, and Blake.
At the time of this interview, Hagstrum, a Fellow at the Center (1986-87), was professor of English at Northwestern University.
This edition of Soundings was conducted by Wayne J. Pond.
