Mads Larsen is a literary scholar who uses evolutionary perspectives to study cultural change. After earning a PhD and an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles, he became a Postdoc and Researcher at the University of Oslo. Larsen has published over three dozen articles. Stories of Love from Vikings to Tinder is his first research monograph. He co-authored a book on evolutionary positive psychology. His upcoming monograph is Master-Narrative Transitions from the Vikings to A.I.: How Fiction Helps Communities Adapt to a Changing World. Larsen was a review editor for Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture and serves on the editorial board of Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Western Ideologies of Love1. Exiting Heroic Love: Monogamous Indoctrination in the Icelandic Sagas (1200s)2. Promoting Courtly Love: Female Consent and Modern Morality in Tristrams saga (1226)3. Companionate Love & the Nuptial Valve: Urban Incels in The Unfaithful Wife (c. 1500)4. Promoting Romantic Love: Individual Choice in Holberg’s Comedies (1722–1754)5. The Libertine Love Experiment: Sex as Intoxication in Bellman’s Epistles (1770–1790)6. Perils of Romantic Love: Dark Triad Seducers in The Magic Goblet (1841)7. Exploring Confluent Love: Darwinian Mating in the Modern Breakthrough (1871–1888)8. Consequences of Confluent Love: Self-Realization in The Serious Game (1912–2016)9. Lesbian Heroic Love: A Queer Dissolution of Confluent Love in Baby Jane (2005)10. Incels & Insings: Marginalized Men and Women in Sigurd and Half of Malmö (2020s)Conclusion: The Upcoming Fourth Sexual RevolutionBibliographyIndex