Aesthetic Objectivism : Instapoetry ‘Dark Love’ through Lang Leav’s Poetry (2013-2016)

The themes of Lang Leav's poems are mostly about love, loss and loneliness. Her poetry is very well received by many and is also said to promote a toxic view of love. This paper aims to examine the themes of love which we argue contain the elements of dark love. Dark love is divided into 'love as a sad notion' and 'love as a hopeless infatuation'. A textual analysis is done on selected poems using Frank Sibley's aesthetic theory of objectivism (1959). The analysis reveals that the poems promote 'dark love' that is grim, disappointing and pessimistic. Keywords: Lang Leav,  Dark Love, Aesthetic Theory of Objectivism, Poetry Meaning eISSN: 2398-4287 © 2022. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. DO