A History of the Breast

"In this marvellously erudite and eclectic cultural history, Marilyn Yalom looks at the 25,000 years of ideas about the female breast. The breast has always been laden with hugely powerful and contradictory meanings. The 'good' breast - in ancient idols, fifteenth-century Italian Madonnas, images of French Republican Liberty and Equality - nourishes infants or entire communities. The 'bad' breast - Ezekiel's wanton harlots, Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth, the torpedo-breasted modern dominatrix - bespeaks enticement and aggression. In eight thematic sections - the sacred, the erotic, the domestic, the political, the psychological, the commercialized, the medical and the liberated - Yalom carefully teases apart the continuities and disruptions in images of the breast across time ; her journey from Paleolithic Goddess to the modern women's liberation movement is full of surprises." - book jacket.