Synopses & Reviews
Marina Warner explores the tradition of personifying liberty, justice, wisdom, charity, and other ideals and desiderata in the female form, and examines the tension between women's historic and symbolic roles. Drawing on the evidence of public art, especially sculpture, and painting, poetry, and classical mythology, she ranges over the allegorical presence of the woman in the Western tradition with a sharply observant eye and a piquant and engaging style.
Review
"The author of acclaimed books on the Virgin Mary and Joan of Arc has written a more broadly conceived study of the female form from antiquity to the present. Drawing on a wealth of examples from myth, popular culture, literature, and art, the author includes 100 black and white illustrations as documentation. Erudite and suggestive, this is a book to be dipped into repeatedly. Beneath the profusion of learning and countless examples of female form, from ancient goddesses to the Statue of Liberty, is the author's sustained paean to the nobility of the human, more specifically, female, body." Reviewed by Andrew Witmer, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)
Description
Includes bibliographical references and index.
About the Author
Among Marina Warner's books are From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers (1995), Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary (1983), and Joan of Arc (California, 1999).