Name: An ode to envy
Uploaded: 2013-10-23T15:03:43Z
Duration: 12 min 57 s
Description: What is jealousy? What drives it, and why do we secretly love it? No study has ever been able to capture its "loneliness, longevity, grim thrill" -- that is, says Parul Sehgal, except for fiction. In an eloquent meditation she scours pages from literature to show how jealousy is not so different from a quest for knowledge.

What is jealousy? What drives it, and why do we secretly love it? No study has ever been able to capture its "loneliness, longevity, grim thrill" -- that is, says Parul Sehgal, except for fiction. In an eloquent meditation she scours pages from literature to show how jealousy is not so different from a quest for knowledge.

Parul Sehgal: An ode to envy

An ode to envy

Through literature, we see jealousy's multiple facets: from the grim thrill of Proust's narratives to the creative extremes it provokes.

Parul Sehgal explores how fiction reveals jealousy's role in human nature through Proust's studies of sexual competitiveness.

Jealousy, a hungry emotion craving details, drives us into realms of fantasy, shaping our perceptions and actions unconsciously.