The Sexual Night .The French List

In The Sexual Night, renowned French writer and critic Pascal Quignard meditates on a remarkable collection of illustrations of sexual imagery. He moves from the annals of global art to ancient and modern, from Bosch and Durer to Rembrandt and Tintoretto, from Caspar David Friedrich and Caravaggio to Bacon and Jean Rustin. The meditations are wonderfully woven together, presenting a reflection on the sexual image that psychoanalysis calls "the primal scene" - a concept introduced by Freud, as the first sexual scene witnessed by a child; a scene that is unexplained, unforgettable, and ultimately haunting. Throughout the course of twenty-seven chapters that draw on the mythological and artistic resources of Western and Far Eastern culture - including the tragic love of Dido and Aeneas, the scandalous figure of Mary Magdalene; Lascaux an