In this extraordinarily rich book, Madelyn Gutwirth examines over one hundred prints and paintings, dozens of texts, and the work of a great many cultural critics in order to consider how gender politics were played out during a highly volatile era. Finding evidence of a crisis in gender relations during the eighteenth century, she traces its evolution in the politics of rococo art, demographic trends, plans for the control of prostitution, maternal nursing and wet-nursing practices, folklore, the salon, and in the theater of Diderot and the polemics of Rousseau. Gutwirth shows how a hostile gender ideology consigned women to a solely mothering role before the political revolution began, and how women who struggled to participate in the nascent First French Republic found themselves hobbled by the representational practices of the revolutionaries, especially their use of allegory. The artificiality and anachronism of the Revolution's representation of women were ratified by the Napoleonic Code. Once depicted as erotic goddesses by the rococo, then as goddesses of liberty (Marianne), the dominant figuration of women around 1800 would become the dying waif. As modern republics began their struggle toward legitimacy, women's posture within them had been reduced, by representation, to feeble marginality. Gutwirth combines perspectives from literature, history, sociology, demography, psychology, and art history and criticism in her delineation of this crisis.

Goddess worship is among the original forms of human religious expression. Thomas Cleary and Sartaz Aziz show how the Divine Feminine has never really disappeared from religion-in spite of its suppression by patriarchal culture. Whether conceptualized as divine person, saint, mythic figure, archetype, or abstract principle, the Divine Feminine inevitably arises, manifesting in hidden as well as obvious ways. This book is a guided tour of the feminine principles, symbols, and imagery found in Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism, and the Sufi tradition of Islam, with insightful meditations on the deep meanings of these manifestations of the Divine.

Twenty-eight speculative fantasies, parables, and fairy tales unfold in medieval China, pre-Islamic Arabia, ancient Rome, and other historic settings. Includes atmospheric black-and-white illustrations and an Introduction by T. E. Lawrence.

Twilight of the Celtic Gods is a fascinating account of Britain's surviving Celtic tradition. This ground-breaking book - based on the authors' combined research in the field - reveals for the first time clear evidence that many ancient traditions and customs are still kept alive today in the heart of twentieth-century Britain. Combining first-hand accounts with folklore, mythology and archeology, David Clarke and Andy Roberts have uncovered the last traces of a Celtic legacy which is in imminent danger of extinction. Their quest combines beliefs about the natural and supernatural worlds with the awesome forces locked in the landscape and in the mind. Illustrated throughout with colour and black and white photographs, line drawings and maps, this book is an important collection of the last remnants of our ancient past.