Love, Knowledge, and Freedom in Pleasantville, Religious Scripture, and Wider Western Literature

Abstract Love has long been extolled as a route to human moral and spiritual progress fulfilment, not only in much past religious literature narrative but the more recent work of writers such philosopher novelist Iris Murdoch. In texts, however, sentiment (or virtue) love is clearly than just blind or brute passion presupposes distinctive capacities for knowledge free agency. That said, relationship between (right virtuous) agency seems highly problematic ambivalent on many traditional (perhaps most notably Christian) conceptions. This paper addresses issues complexities via some exploration Genesis modern movie Pleasantville —with further aid from literary works Shakespeare, Blake, Heinlein, others—to end realistic view its implications.