File spoon-archives/french-feminism.archive/french-feminism_1996/96-07-07.000, message 83


Date: Tue, 25 Jun 1996 20:26:32 -0700
From: dwalter-AT-ucla.edu (don walter)
Subject: Sacred Prostitutes et al.


Apologies for my (absent-minded ex-professor) slips over names and who's who
on this list.  I also have a little trouble with Eudora, sorting through
various In- and Out-boxes while writing responses--- so please be tolerant
of some goofs; no insults intended!

Shelley Purcell mentions a book on sacred prostitutes, which may be the one
listed in our library's little-used storage facility: Nancy Qualls-Corbett,
The Sacred Prostitute: eternal aspects of the feminine. Toronto: Inner City
1988.  Is this the one you have seen?  I'll certainly take a look at it, in
any case. But/and: prostitution, like everything else in society, is (I
believe) vastly differently constructed in various societies, and bears
correspondingly different meanings to participants of all sexes, and to
non-participants too.

  Shelley's remark about "understanding the sexual situation around 200 AD"
is fascinating-- what persons do you have in mind?  Candace recommends
Bataille's L'Erotisme-- I'm getting far too many suggestions for fascinating
books to read-- I guess that's the good thing about lists like this.  There
are a lot of other takes on how Christianity did its things around that
time, but his may be a good one.  My wife and I have enjoyed a series of
lectures locally in Los Angeles, about Dead Sea Scrolls these days; one of
the most fascinating was by the authors of "The Truth About the Virgin: Sex
and Ritual in the Dead Sea Scrolls," by Ita Sheres & Anne Kohn Blau. NY:
Continuum Publishers 1995.  I won't give away their fascinating suggestions,
except to instance the idea (not exclusively theirs, but supported by their
new readings in the Scrolls) that "Mary" (or Miriam) was as much a Title
(like Pharaoh) as a personal name.  This was around 200 B.C.E. to 100 C.E.
(one group's names for B.C. and A.D.), as the period when folks wrote the
scrolls.

Somebody (I've lost the posting) asked whether DuBois had only the book on
Sappho.  No, that's only the last of six or seven excellent,
growth-indicating and growth-promoting books of hers.  They're all fairly
short, too, so you won't get bogged down in immense tomes--- and I found
them all really good, on a wide variety of subjects (though focussed 'round
her expertness in Classic Greek).

Don




   

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