WHY versus WHY NOT? Why did God place us in a world full of pleasures if we aren’t meant to pursue them all? In an imaginative dialogue, Oscar Wilde asks Jesus Christ to respond to this question about critical lifestyle choices. Their talk vividly illustrates the arguments for both sensual pleasure-seeking and moral moderation. Playwright, dramatist, poet, critic—Wilde openly defied the mores of Victorian society. His literary repartee fueled an “if it feels good, do it” humanistic philosophy that is still prevalent in the world today. SO WHAT does JESUS SAY?
Sit back, turn on the air conditioning, make sure you have an iced drink to hand, and enjoy the heat from this collection of three sizzling short and steamy page turners. The Prize Double the Doms, double the fun! When she shows up at the prestigious Vivant Club to claim her prize of one month’s free membership, Jessie Barnett doesn’t know what to expect. The two powerful Doms who are hers for the evening have no doubt at all what they require from her – complete surrender, on her knees. Will one evening’s pleasure be enough? Or is there more to be won, an even greater prize hovering just beyond her reach? Rose’s Are Red Rose has had a crush on Iain McCain for years, so when she spots her sexy ex-teacher with a whip in his hand at her favourite BDSM club she decides it’s time for a little extra-curricular activity. All grown up now, and she decides a Valentine’s Day card might earn her the spanking she craves from him. Of course, she has to deliver it personally… on her knees. A Very Private Performance After being fired from her job for her pole dancing hobby, Emily has no problem letting her two sexy bosses know how hypocritical they area. Quick to correct the mistake, the brothers vow to make it up to her… in return for a very private performance.
With audacious dexterity, David Howes weaves together topics ranging from love and beauty magic in Papua New Guinea to nasal repression in Freudian psychology and from the erasure and recovery of the senses in contemporary ethnography to the specter of the body in Marx. Through this eclectic and penetrating exploration of the relationship between sensory experience and cultural expression, Sensual Relations contests the conventional exclusion of sensuality from intellectual inquiry and reclaims sensation as a fundamental domain of social theory. David Howes is Professor of Anthropology, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec.
"I may reasonably hope to have all my expectations of pleasure realized."--Elizabeth Bennet, Pride and Prejudice Discover Jane Austen at her most scandalous--you've never seen this side of Jane Austen before! Lines from her classic works have been paired with scandalous silhouettes to create double entendres that will tease readers into all sorts of racy positions. We dare you not to blush as you explore the very steamy, not-so-proper side of Austen's world.
Explores how Walter Pater and his contemporary aesthetes were influenced by modern philosophies. Repositioning Walter Pater at the philosophical nexus of Aestheticism, this study presents the first discussion of how Pater redefines Romantic Individualism through his engagements with modern philosophical discourses and in the context of emerging modernity in Britain. It also considers the dynamics between form and thought at the fin de siecle, contextualizing its comments in terms of Matthew Arnold, Oscar Wilde and Vernon Lee and others, to offer a fully integrated account of the intellectual cultures and currents in this period.
The papers featured in Attachment and Sexuality create a dense tapestry, each forming a separate narrative strand that elucidates different configurations of the relationship between attachment and sexuality. As a whole, the volume explores the areas of convergence and divergence, opposition, and integration between these two systems. It suggests that there is a bi-directional web of influences that weaves the attachment and sexual systems together in increasingly complex ways from infancy to adulthood. The volume’s unifying thread is the idea that the attachment system, and particularly the degree of felt security, or lack thereof in relation to early attachment figures, provides a paradigm of relatedness that forms a scaffold for the developmental unfolding of sexuality in all its manifestations. Such manifestations include infantile and adult, masturbatory and mutual, and normative and perverse. Also central to the papers is the idea that the development of secure attachment is predicated, in part, on the development of the capacity for mentalization, or the ability to envision and interpret the behavior of oneself and others in terms of intentional mental states, including desires, feelings, beliefs, and motivations. Topics discussed in the book will help to shape the direction and tenor of further dialogues in the arena of attachment and sexuality.
In her 10th novel, Acker's heroine, Laurie, is a woman helpless before the fury of her emotions. Love-obsessed, Laurie is plunged into a harrowing dilemma--sexuality and her feminism are the two poles that threaten to obliterate her inner poise, the false magic of her woman's identity.
