Roman Charity: Queer Lactations in Early Modern Visual Culture

ISBN-13: 9783837632842 / Angielski / Miękka / 2016 / 430 str.

Jutta Gisela Sperling

Opis

The ancient stories of Pero, who breastfed her father, and of the unnamed Roman daughter who breastfed her mother, were of tremendous interest to artists and their audiences from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment. The Roman Charity investigates the iconography of the breastfeeding daughter from the perspective of queer sexuality and erotic maternity. The book explores the popularity of a topic that renders modern viewers uneasy, but appealed to early modern observers for its eroticizing shock value, its ironic take on the venerable concept of charity, and its implied critique of patriarchal power structures. It tries to understand why and how early modern viewers found an incestuous adult breastfeeding scene "good to think with," and aims at expanding and queering our notions of early modern sexuality.

Recenzje

"Sperling's book is a useful addition to scholarly conversations in several fields and disciplines - art history and early modern gender studies in particular. Though not a text for an introductory course, it provides more advanced students and researchers with thoughtful and creative tools for analyzing the transmission of images through time as well as about the ways in which we engage the meaning and reception of those images." Peter Carlson, Comitatus, 48 (2017)

O autorze

Sperling, Jutta GiselaJutta Gisela Sperling (PhD) teaches early modern history at Hampshire College, MA. Her research interests include convent studies, comparative legal studies in the Mediterranean, and early modern lactation imagery.