cover image Carnal Knowing: Female Nakedness & Religious Meaning in the Christian West

Carnal Knowing: Female Nakedness & Religious Meaning in the Christian West

Margaret Miles. Vintage Books USA, $15 (254pp) ISBN 978-0-679-73401-7

Miles traces today's ideas of nakedness to the dawn of Christianity, showing how people learned to perceive the nude male figure as the embodiment of positive traits such as athletic ability and to contradictorily treat the nude female figure as the embodiment of wantonness. Illustrated. (May)