Loves' Litany is the first extensive analysis of the relation of erotic philosophy to homosexuality in the modern period, and examines the ways in which nineteenth-century conceptions of love have shaped contemporary conceptions of lesbian and gay subjectivity. The book focuses on four features of romantic love that are central to both nineteenth-century erotic philosophy and twentieth-century homoeroticism: complementary merger, the idea that 'opposites attract'; love-death (Liebestod), the figuration of love as fatal union; Wertherism, the association of love with sadness, solitude, and suicide; and 'crystallization,' Stendhal's term for believing a beloved to be perfect.