Any glance at any set of headlines from the 24-hour news networks will have you scrambling to search inside the archive for Black Eyed Peas’ Where is the Love? Perhaps part of the answer to their question’s hiding inside the largest book category on Amazon: romance. Romance novel tropes could fix many of our current problems.

FEATURED DOWNLOAD: The ultimate list of romance novel tropes.

I mean, whatever we can say about Donald Trump, I think we can all agree he didn’t read enough romance novels growing up. Ditto Harvey Weinstein and the rest of his mighty throng: those slain by the #MeToo movement. We can blame part of this proliferation of moral failure stemming from a lack of romance on certain false assumptions about romance tropes in the past (false assumptions based on bad attempts to imitate Romance’s otherwise robust literary history), we can blame part of this on a lack of attempts to speak about the unconscious and unseen world by means of the conscious and seen world (what poets also call Romance), and we can blame part of it on our having written off the very heavy burden romance can carry when it comes to… say… virtue.

When we talk about the great moral failures of many leaders over the past decade, we’re really talking about those three missing pieces: bad tropes, an obsession with the material, and lack of virtue. Romance offers the antidote. Or can, anyways, if it’s disinterested in pornography. Romance novel tropes at their best arouse literary desire by talking about things indirectly — and that goes far beyond romantic love, of course. At its worst, romance uses crude obscenities not to move desire, not bring reverence nor to inspire the kind of enthusiasm meant by the old sense of the word (enthous: possessed by a god), but rather to either make fun of the body or expose one’s hatred for it. It is not a coincidence, for instance, that Fifty Shades championed as much violence against the body of literature as it did against the body of woman. It’s curious to that the BDSM crowd seeks trust as their highest end while promoting both a literature and a lifestyle that breeches trust at every point: even this points to how dependent, say, the contract in Fifty Shades is upon true Romance. At its highest and best, Romance will awaken that kind of true possession (enthuse), that kind of muse-inspiration (bemuse), that kind of higher and better thought to which all literature aspires — an aspiration we living today draw from works like Pride and Prejudice, Tristan and Isolde, Romeo and Juliet, and the indomitable influence of Roman de la Rose. What follows borrows heavily from the old book The Allegory of Love:

Many, for instance, have taken out their ire on the alleged trope of the damsel in distress and, in the case of the current movements, would point out that it weakens women. I won’t deny that this is a trope, of course, but I will call into question assumptions about the source of this trope. Like witch burnings, many folk today lay the blame for damsels in distress at the feet of the medieval era when — in fact — they showed up on the scene in the modern era. Nearer to the start of the romance genre, we find both men and women with very clear, very assertive roles in the relationship. Granted, his roles trended toward the extroverted and hers towards the introverted, but they could easily be reversed. Though he overcomes external obstacles to the relationship like poverty or villainy or danger in the form of a dragon and though she overcomes more psychological barriers such as shame and fear and fair welcome which would work something like the #MeToo idea of consent (mind you, the idea stretches much, much earlier into the relationship), both of these roles may well could have been reversed — introversion and extroversion — when it came to courtly love. Strictly speaking, the damoiseau is in as much distress as the damsel, the knight in as much trouble as the lady, and both seek the highest ends of the relationship together. The point of Roman de la Rose isn’t “rescue the girl.” The point is “save the relationship together.” The point is that both parties seek the end of the Romance, something that rings true in our best romances even today. And from that end, we could easily say that many of the moral failures today stem from a great many folk seeking the worst rather than the best ends of the relationship by refusing to work together to delicately untie real barriers towards true Romance (the ideal hiding behind romance novel tropes): the continual manifestation of the ideal Romance in that great dance with a real partner in real life. Or said in another way, to make more and more of the ideal real in the here and now through humility and deference on the part of both parties. Bad tropes in the Romance (and pornography) genres work against this end and, when assumed by leaders, have led to many moral failures.

FEATURED DOWNLOAD: The ultimate list of romance novel tropes.

Or there’s Romance novel tropes in poetry. Or at least raw Romance. I’ve often been called a romantic by writer friends and they don’t really mean that I plan elaborate dates for my bride (though I have on occasion: a natural outworking of said poetic form). Rather, they mean that in my life and in my poetry I try often to speak of the unseen by using the seen and to speak of the unconscious by using the conscious. (Doing so here would kind of defeat the purpose by drawing too much attention to the mechanics, since this is an essay and not a sonnet or a song or a story). Stories and poems aren’t about A happened and then B happened and that resulted in C. They’re more about A wanting B and regardless of whether B happens, A’s pursuit of B means C. That’s how a story or a poem or art works: demonstrating and then proving points without explaining them, awakening desires for unspoken and unpictured realities. Lacking that kind of nuance has also led to the downfall of a great many folk these days.

Of course Romance — even romance novel tropes — can carry a heavy burden in virtue. The early romances valued humility and courtesy more than anything and showed how pursuing a life of humility and courtesy in love could lead one toward finding fulfillment in the deepest desires one can have. Adultery came into the picture mainly because at the time, the monks forbade sexual passion simply because it suspended intellectual activity (which, objectively, it does do for as many times as we men get criticized for thinking with our…well anyways, you get the point). They hadn’t quite reconciled the idea in marriage or healthy relationships. And as for the religion of love, Romance was used as an extension of religion, as an escape from religion, and as a rival religion (and romance novel tropes cropped up for all three). But generally speaking all of the approaches involved the earning of romantic love by seeking the higher virtues attached to humility and courtesy: fair welcome, freedom, delight, joy, reason, etc. Again, the seeking of these virtues that would earn the right to romance seems sincerely lacking in many public figures these days and the subsequent vices have played out on national news.

So of course when I said at the start that Romance could fix our problems, I didn’t mean all of our problems. And I didn’t mean everything that sells under the Romance novel tropes category could fix anything. But a great many romance writers have reared up some of the best leaders of our time by showing the value of struggling towards a shared romantic ideal with the real person in front of you, in talking about the unseen realities that govern civic life, and in seeking the highest virtues, chief of which is that sort of humility and deference to your fellow human we find wholly lacking in the current disappearance of civility in the public discourse and especially in those who would sexually assault their neighbor. The Black Eyed Peas did, in fact, ask precisely the right question for our time:

Where is the love?

FEATURED DOWNLOAD: The ultimate list of romance novel tropes.