
In Praise of the Whip
A Cultural History of Arousal
Niklaus Largier(Author)
Zone Books (Publisher)
Published on 18. May 2007
Book
Hardback
528 pages
978-1-890951-65-8 (ISBN)
Description
The emotional and sensual, religious and erotic excitement of the whip, a crucial instrument of stimulation in devotional and sexual practices, as seen in religious, literary, and medical texts and images.In Praise of the Whip: A Cultural History of Arousal is a new history of voluntary flagellation in Europe, from its invention in medieval religious devotion to its use in the modern pornographic imagination. Working with a wide range of religious, literary, and medical texts and images, Niklaus Largier explores the emotional and sensual, religious and erotic excitement of the whip, a crucial instrument of stimulation in devotional and sexual practices. From early modern pornography to the Marquis de Sade and the fantasies of Swinburne and Joyce, the erotic and devotional imagination drew on the whip. Largier explores how the Reformation and Counter-Reformation problematized the medieval culture of arousal. The stimulating qualities of medieval visual displays, especially flagellant practices, processions, and spectacles, were subjected to a criticism that sought to control the imagination. In modern bourgeois life the practice, effects, and imagery of flagellation became a central site of investigation into concerns and anxieties about exercising emotional self-control and censoring fantasy. Modern references to flagellant practice in the works of Swinburne, Proust, and Joyce testified not only to a "decadent" fascination with "medieval" cultures or "perverse sexuality," but also to a fascination that nineteenth-century censorship, informed by psychopathological discourses, had obliterated. Such evocations of flagellation, Largier explains, were attempts to recover a culture of stimulation and imagination-both erotic and devotional-that transcended the modern boundaries of sexuality.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Interest Age: From 18 years
Product notice
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
52 illus.
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 44 mm
Weight
930 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-890951-65-8 (9781890951658)
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Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Niklaus Largier is Professor of German Literature and Director of the Religious Studies program at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Zeit, Zeitlichkeit, Ewigkeit and Diogenes der Kyniker. He is also the editor of the selected writings of Meister Eckhart.