About This Book
The author offers a panoramic cultural and literary survey of erotic feeling and its institutions from antiquity to modernity. Beginning with ancient Near Eastern fertility cults and mythic figures, the narrative moves through Greek and Roman practices, medieval asceticism and devotional love, courtly and Renaissance transformations, and discussions of desire in later centuries. Using classical sources, anecdotes, and interpretive essays, it traces how desire has been ritualized, regulated, aestheticized, and philosophically examined across societies and epochs.