Publisher's Synopsis
This volume provides a pictorial cultural history of the images and iconography of sexuality in the Western world, from the Middle Ages down to the present. The first book of its type, the work contains 328 plates, many heretofore unknown, which comprise the visual tradition of human sexuality. It traces mythmaking about the sexual form, from the early cultural roots of Christianity to more recent mythmaking about AIDS, drawing on material from medicine, anatomy, pathology, art and literature to show how our idea of the body and its sexuality has been portrayed. New material on Jack the Ripper and new interpretations on the contributions of Da Vinci and Goethe are also included. The text will benefit psychologists, psychiatrists, sexologists, physicians, literary and art historians.
