A tale of love, lust and the living body

Sex belongs to all times and all places. But sexual norms have changed dramatically in the course of the centuries. What was once the rule in the Middle Ages now often seems laughable or even absurd. Sexological and other less logical stories looks at varying opinions about sexual matters, which continue to be interpreted differently, depending on social evolutions and the prevailing moral perspective.

From the Roman Ars Amandi and the Indian Kama Sutra, via Freud's psychoanalysis, through to modern scientific and erotic literature: the fascination with sex is deeply rooted in human history. In 'heathen' religions, the genitalia were often a symbol of fertility, whereas in the 19th century a kiss on the mouth was regarding as something impure!

Considerable attention is devoted to sex in the Middle Ages: women in love, the troubadours and their impossible romances, erotic and scatological images in Romanesque and Gothic churches, the myth of the chastity belt... This book explores people's different experience of sex in different periods and places, from men with breasts and women with beards, to the 'discovery' of the clitoris and the electric vibrator.

Johan Mattelaer is a urologist. With Sexological and other less logical stories he offers a broad summary of the evolution of different opinions about sex.
He has previously written The phallus: adoration, decoration and mutilation, a richly illustrated standard work about the symbolism of the phallus throughout history in art, culture and religion.