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Redeeming the Kamasutra
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Redeeming the Kamasutra Hardback - 2016 - 1st Edition

by Wendy Doniger

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Reader reviews for Redeeming the Kamasutra

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The Kamasutra, composed in the third century CE, is the world's most famous textbook of erotic love. There is nothing remotely like it even today, and for its time it was astonishingly sophisticated. Yet it is all but ignored as a serious work in its country of origin-sometimes taken as a matter of national shame rather than pride - and in the rest of the world it is a source of amused amazement and inspires magazine articles that offer "mattress-quaking sex styles" such as "the backstairs boogie" and "the spider web."

In this scholarly and superbly readable book, one of the world's foremost authorities on ancient Indian texts seeks to restore the Kamasutra to its proper place in the Sanskrit canon, as a landmark of India's secular literature. She reveals fascinating aspects of the Kamasutra as a guide to the art of living for the cosmopolitan beau monde of ancient India: its emphasis on grooming and etiquette (including post-coital conversation), the study and practice of the arts (ranging from cooking and composing poetry to coloring one's teeth and mixing perfumes), and discretion and patience in conducting affairs (especially adulterous affairs). In its encyclopedic social and psychological narratives, it also displays surprisingly modern ideas about gender and role-playing, female sexuality, and homosexual desire.

Even as she draws our attention to the many ways in which the Kamasutra challenges the conventions of its time (and often ours) - in dismissing procreation as the aim of sex, for instance - Doniger also shows us how it perpetuates attitudes that have continued to darken human sexuality: passages that twin passion with violence, for example, and those that explain away women's protests and exclamations of pain as ploys to excite their male partners. In these attitudes, as in its more enlightened observations on sexual love, we see the nearly two- thousand-year-old Kamasutra mirror twenty-first-century realities.

In investigating and helping us understand a much celebrated but under-appreciated text, Wendy Doniger has produced a rich and compelling text of her own that will interest, delight, and surprise scholars and lay readers alike.

Details

  • Title Redeeming the Kamasutra
  • Author Wendy Doniger
  • Binding Hardback
  • Edition number 1st
  • Edition 1
  • Pages 184
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Oxford Univ PR, 2016. 184p. Hardback. Wendy Doniger has finally done justice to the Kamasutra
  • Publication date 2016-03-10
  • Features Bibliography
  • ISBN 9780190499280 / 0190499281
  • Weight 0.8 lbs (0.36 kg)
  • Dimensions 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.9 in (23.11 x 15.49 x 2.29 cm)
  • Themes
    • Cultural Region: Indian
  • Category Religion - World Religions
  • Library of Congress subjects RELIGION / Hinduism / History, LITERARY CRITICISM / Asian / Indic
  • Library of Congress Catalogue Number 2015036282
  • Dewey Decimal Code 891.209

Media reviews

Citations

  • Publishers Weekly, 01/11/2016, Page 0

About the author

Wendy Doniger is the Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Chicago and the author of over 30 books, including On Hinduism and The Hindus: An Alternative History.

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Redeeming the Kamasutra
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Redeeming the Kamasutra

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Redeeming the Kamasutra

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Hardcover. New. New Book; Fast Shipping from UK; Not signed; Not First Edition; The Kamasutra, composed in the third century CE, is the world's most famous textbook of erotic love. There is nothing remotely like it even today, and for its time it was astonishingly sophisticated. Yet it is all but ignored as a serio
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Redeeming the Kamasutra

Redeeming the Kamasutra

by Doniger, Wendy

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New York. 2016. March 2016. Oxford University Press. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 9780190499280. 6 x 9 inches. 182 pages. hardcover. Cover art: Rasamanjari, Indian miniature, Basohli school, 1720. Jacket design by Brady McNamara. keywords: Asia India Literary Criticism World Literature. DESCRIPTION - The�Kamasutra, composed in the third century CE, is the world's most famous textbook of erotic love. There is nothing remotely like it even today, and for its time it was astonishingly sophisticated. Yet, it is all but ignored as a serious work in its country of origin--sometimes taken as a matter of national shame rather than pride--and in the rest of the world it is a source of amused amazement, and inspires magazine articles that offer 'mattress-quaking sex styles' such as 'the backstairs boogie' and 'the spider web'. In this scholarly and superbly readable book, one of the world's foremost authorities on ancient Indian texts seeks to restore the�Kamasutra�to its proper place in… Read more
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Redeeming the Kamasutra

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