Word: offing
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Framing his literary inquiry with the early Christian mystics and the late Renaissance, Perella points out that the history of kissing is closely associated with the tensions between Platonic and anti-Platonic thought. At one extreme is the purity of Plato's androgynous idea that love is a spiritual...
Amor Interruptus. Perella views early Christians as erotic mystics. The New Testament shows Christ to have been an active kisser, though in his case it must be assumed that kissing was the religious equivalent of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
To some medieval mystics, the kiss seems to have been one of the higher forms of contemplation. It was, Perella says, the "terminus," not the "prelude" to lovemaking. As such, kissing fitted perfectly into the medieval concept that there are dynamic benefits to be had from unsatisfied physical desire. Sexual...
Eventually the idea of sexual restraint became an important element in that brocaded bag of tricks known as courtly love. But it took the cleverness of Baldassare Castiglione, a 16th century popularizer of Platonic love treatises, to humanize the conceit for sophisticated courtiers. In The Book of the Courtier (1528...
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