
- 448 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
About this book
"[An] enlightening and entertaining . . . survey of the world's oldest profession" from the Whore of Babylon to the modern sex-worker movement (
Kirkus Reviews).
From Eve and Lilith to Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, the prostitute has been both a target of scorn and a catalyst for social change. In Love for Sale, cultural historian Nils Johan Ringdal delivers an authoritative and engaging history of this most maligned, yet globally ubiquitous, form of human commerce.
Beginning with the epic of Gilgamesh, the Old Testament, and ancient cultures from Asia to the Mediterranean, Ringdal considers the varying way societies have dealt with and thought about prostitutes through history. He discusses how they were included in the priestess class in ancient Greece and Rome; how the rise of the courtesan in nineteenth-century Europe shaped literature, fashion, the arts, and modern sensibilities. He uncovers the first manuals on the art of sex and seduction, the British Empire's campaigns against prostitution in India, and stories of the Japanese "comfort women" who served the armies in the Pacific theater of World War II. Ringdal closes with the rise of the sex-workers' rights movement and 'sex-positive" feminism, and a realistic look at the true risks and rewards of prostitution in the present day.
Recalling Camille Paglia's Sexual Personae with its broad sweep across centuries and continents , Love for Sale "uses [its] subject as a springboard for exploring the ever-changing notions of love, sexual identity, morality and gender among various cultures" (Nan Goldberg, Newark Sunday Star-Ledger).
From Eve and Lilith to Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, the prostitute has been both a target of scorn and a catalyst for social change. In Love for Sale, cultural historian Nils Johan Ringdal delivers an authoritative and engaging history of this most maligned, yet globally ubiquitous, form of human commerce.
Beginning with the epic of Gilgamesh, the Old Testament, and ancient cultures from Asia to the Mediterranean, Ringdal considers the varying way societies have dealt with and thought about prostitutes through history. He discusses how they were included in the priestess class in ancient Greece and Rome; how the rise of the courtesan in nineteenth-century Europe shaped literature, fashion, the arts, and modern sensibilities. He uncovers the first manuals on the art of sex and seduction, the British Empire's campaigns against prostitution in India, and stories of the Japanese "comfort women" who served the armies in the Pacific theater of World War II. Ringdal closes with the rise of the sex-workers' rights movement and 'sex-positive" feminism, and a realistic look at the true risks and rewards of prostitution in the present day.
Recalling Camille Paglia's Sexual Personae with its broad sweep across centuries and continents , Love for Sale "uses [its] subject as a springboard for exploring the ever-changing notions of love, sexual identity, morality and gender among various cultures" (Nan Goldberg, Newark Sunday Star-Ledger).
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Yes, you can access Love for Sale by Nils Johan Ringdal in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & Social History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
Information
Table of contents
- Cover Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Introduction
- One The Whore Of Babylon
- Two Patriarchs and Prestesses
- Three Fallen Angels
- Four Greek Liberalism
- Five Hindu Ambiguity
- Six Rome’S Daughters
- Seven Repentant Sinners
- Eight Tang China’S Pleasure Women
- Nine Muhammad’S Women
- Ten Guilds and Cloisters, Rogues and Rapists
- Eleven Celestial Whores
- Twelve The War Of The Roses
- Thirteen Pox, Punishment, and Penitence
- Fourteen Splendor and Misery Of The Courtesans
- Fifteen Love In The South Seas
- Sixteen Fanny Hill
- Seventeen Hara-Kiri
- Eighteen The Penetration Of Africa
- Nineteen Nana and Her Times
- Twenty Moral Crusaders
- Twenty-One Sex In The Wild West
- Twenty-Two Imperial Virtue
- Twenty-Three Tango!
- Twenty-Four Ottoman Footnote
- Twenty-Five The White Slave Trade
- Twenty-Six Kamikaze and Comfort
- Twenty-Seven Call Girls
- Twenty-Eight Academic Sex Tourism
- Twenty-Nine Feminism and The Sex Workers’ Movement
- Quotes and References
- Bibliographical Postscript
- References