History of the Breast - Brossura

Yalom, Marilyn

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0044409133 ISBN 13: 9780044409137

Casa editrice: Pandora, 1997

Riassunto

*Major 6 part series sold to BBC2* ‘I intend to make you think about women’s breast as you never have before.’

A wonderful cultural history of the breast which focuses on its erotic, religious, political, commercial associations – from medieval Madonnas to 1950’s pointed torpedo cups and todays emaciated waif models.

Su questo libro

L'autore:

Dr Marilyn Yalom is a French scholar and one of the founders of the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at Stanford University.

Pandora published her much acclaimed book Blood Sisters: The French Revolution in Women’s Memory in February 1995.

Dalla quarta di copertina:

'I intend to make you think about woman's breasts as you never have before.'

In this marvellously erudite and eclectic cultural history, Marilyn Yalom looks at 25,000 years of ideas about the female breast. The breast has always been laden with hugely powerful and contradictory meanings. The 'good' breast – in ancient idols, fifteenth-century Italian Madonna's, images of French Republican Liberty and Equality – nourishes infants of entire communities. The 'bad' breast – Ezekiel's wanton harlots, Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth, the torpedo-breasted modern dominatrix – bespeaks enticement and aggression. In eight thematic sections – the sacred, the erotic, the domestic, the political, the psychological, the commercialised, the medical and the liberated – Yalom carefully teases apart the continuities and disruptions in images of the breast across time; her journey from Palaeolithic Goddess to the modern woman's liberation movement is full of surprises.

The author attends throughout to women's own feelings, both historically and now, as we are obliged to confront the powerful meanings our breasts convey, to ourselves and others, as life-givers and life-destroyers. A cultural history of the breast must be inevitably be read within the context of male bias which has dominated Western civilisation for the past 2,500 years. Yet the breast has had its own autonomous history, often constructed from the fantasies of men, but nevertheless one that increasingly expresses the needs, desires and power of the women to whom breasts ultimately belong.

DR MARILYN YALOM received degrees in French from Wellesley College and Harvard University and in comparative literature from John Hopkins University. She is one of the founders of the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at Stanford University and has written several books including the recent and much acclaimed 'Blood Sisters: The French Revolution in Women's Memory'.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Pandora
• Data di pubblicazione: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0044409133
• ISBN 13: 9780044409137
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero edizione: 1
• Numero di pagine: 352