Heaven and the Flesh
Imagery of Desire from the Renaissance to the Rococo

The book studies the relationship between sexual desire and spiritual ascension in art and writing from Renaissance to Romanticism.

Clive Hart (Author), Kay Gilliland Stevenson (Author)

9780521070942, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 28 August 2008

256 pages, 50 b/w illus.
24.4 x 17 x 1.4 cm, 0.41 kg

"Among the handsomest book of the season is Heaven and the Flesh: Imagery of Desire from the Renaissance to the Rococo, by Clive Hart and Kay Gilliland Stevenson." Studies in English Literature

Do angels make love? Will the souls of ordinary people feel sexual pleasure in the next world? Is the aspiration to spiritual salvation helped or hindered by sexual experience? In Heaven and the Flesh Clive Hart and Kay Stevenson explore the opinions of poets and painters on such questions, from the high Renaissance to the birth of romanticism. Hart and Stevenson analyse the work not only of canonical writers and artists, such as Milton and Michelangelo, but also of lesser-known figures such as John Gore and Richard Tompson, and the sometimes anguished speculations of philosophers and theologians. As the evidence of witty pornographic poems and drawings demonstrates, the relationship between sexual desire and spiritual ascension was not always treated with full seriousness. This wide-ranging survey offers sometimes surprising insights into material both familiar and unfamiliar.

1. Sexuality and ascension - finding the way
2. The woman on top - Christ, Endymion, Ganymede
3. Paradisiacal bosoms
4. Imparadised in one another's arms
5. Heaven and the flesh
6. The body and ascension in the sacred rococo art of southern Germany and Austria
7. The assumption and its transformations
8. Conclusion - Jacob's ladder and Keats's Endymion
Appendix.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD]