About the Author

Peter Lewis Allen, a writer living in New York, has a Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of Chicago and an M.B.A. from the Wharton School or the University of Pennsylvania.

Reviews

"Allen searches out the premodern origins of the prejudice against the ill that found such vehement expression in the age of AIDS.... [He] is at his most forceful and persuasive in his examination of the cultural war fought over AIDS, conjuring up a time when politicians invoked the lessons of Sodom and Gomorrah as activists staged 'die-ins' on the floor of St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York." - Mathew Battles, Boston Book Review; "Ever since Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden, Western religious traditions have linked sex to suffering. Allen uses the techniques of literary criticism to trace this relationship from the medieval diagnoses of 'lovesickness' to the AIDS crisis of our own time.... [E]xhaustively searching through medical and theological texts and illustrations, [he] builds a fascinating and sometimes shocking case." - Library Journal

Ever since Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden, Western religious traditions have linked sex to suffering. Allen (The Art of Love: Amatory Fiction from Ovid to the "Romance of the Rose"), uses techniques of literary criticism to trace this relationship from the medieval diagnoses of "lovesickness" (a type of depression) to the AIDS crisis of our own time. Allen also examines the cultural context of leprosy, syphilis, bubonic plague, and the 19th-century fixation on the evils of masturbation, exhaustively searching through medical and theological texts and illustrations to build a fascinating and sometimes shocking case. Allen's narrative, however, could have been greatly strengthened by attention to women's particular experiences of sexuality, pregnancy, childbirth, and sexual assault. For example, bitter disputes surrounded the Victorian use of chloroform during labor, since many theologians viewed pain in childbirth as Eve's daughters' punishment for her original sin. In spite of Allen's omissions, his book provides an important perspective for academic and medical libraries.--Kathy Arsenault, Univ. of South Florida at St. Petersburg Lib. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

"Allen searches out the premodern origins of the prejudice against the ill that found such vehement expression in the age of AIDS.... [He] is at his most forceful and persuasive in his examination of the cultural war fought over AIDS, conjuring up a time when politicians invoked the lessons of Sodom and Gomorrah as activists staged 'die-ins' on the floor of St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York." - Mathew Battles, Boston Book Review; "Ever since Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden, Western religious traditions have linked sex to suffering. Allen uses the techniques of literary criticism to trace this relationship from the medieval diagnoses of 'lovesickness' to the AIDS crisis of our own time.... [E]xhaustively searching through medical and theological texts and illustrations, [he] builds a fascinating and sometimes shocking case." - Library Journal