The Poisoned Embrace: A Brief History of Sexual Pessimism

By Lawrence Osborne

Book Overview

The Poisoned Embrace is a provocative investigation into the history of sexual pessimism as it has evolved in Western theology throughout the ages. Since the days of the Early Fathers, sex and death have formed a theological equation known as sexual pessimism. This aversion to the carnal, and its consequent elevation of the virginal and the chaste, springs not from Christianity, but from Gnosticism. Osborne examines the art, mythologies, and traditions of Christendom, and distinguishes thematic archetypes: the Virgin, the Witch, the Leper, the Noble Savage, the Jew, the Oriental, the Androgyne, and Don Juan. He traces our now-glorified ideal of sexual passion back to the Troubadours and Northern Mystics, and explores how the Passion of the Cross relates the ideas of sublime passion and therapeutic energy.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679754148
• ISBN13: 9780679754145
• Release Date: August 1994
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Length: 260 Pages
• Weight: 0.73 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 4.4" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

elegant essay

Enjoyed this strange little book, which is one of those Sontag-like essays which take in a lot during a kind of bicycle tour of cultural hang ups - it's slight, but intended to be so.Of course, you need a sophisticated reader here, with a light sense of humor...

elegant and witty diversion

This is that unusual mix : a scholarly intellectual polemic which is also hilarious in a dry Brit way - by a young scholar-writer who I hope will soon publish something else soon. The stuff on witchcraft and the conquest of the New World is fascinating and really elegantly done