![]() In 2006 Judith Summers published a book entitled Casanova’s Women: The Great Seducer and the Women He Loved. In fiction such a character might be a charming rogue, but in real life Casanova’s behavior was often far from charming, and this is evident even when all we have to go on is his own narrative. Some have betrayed a vicarious investment in his tales of seduction, just as many readers clearly have it’s interesting that men with great political power, such as Winston Churchill and François Mitterrand, have been especially warm admirers of Casanova. Previous biographers have tended to retell it as he told it, adopting his own point of view with only occasional queries. The word histoire can mean “story” as well as “history,” and a story it certainly is. Fluent in French, he wrote in that language since unlike Italian it was understood throughout Europe. He was the first to tell his own story, in a massive autobiography entitled Histoire de Ma Vie. There have been a number of biographies of Casanova, but the time is overdue for a biography of a different kind. Casanova aspired to a life of freedom from restraints-but freedom at whose expense? It challenges any reader today, and still more it challenges a biographer. ![]() His career as a seducer, already notorious in his own time, is often disturbing and sometimes very dark. But although he was more than his myth, the myth is grounded in truth. He was Giacomo Casanova, a gifted and complicated Venetian who lived from 1725 to 1798, and his story is a fascinating one. He belongs to that rare company of mortals whose personal names have floated free from history, and we know what a Casanova is even if we know nothing about the man who bore that name. Stephen Houston is Dupee Family Professor of Social Science and Professor of Anthropology at Brown University.Ī quick video look at the book from Yale University Press.Everyone knows that Casanova was a seducer. Aiming to shift mainstream conceptions of the Maya, Houston argues that adolescent men were not simply present in images and texts, but central to both. The ardent hope was that youths would grow into effective kings and noblemen, capable of leadership in battle and service in royal courts. The political volatility of the Classic Maya period gave male adolescents valuable status as potential heirs, and many of the most precious surviving ceramics likely celebrated their coming-of-age rituals. The Gifted Passage establishes that adolescent men in Maya art were the subjects and makers of hieroglyphics, painted ceramics, and murals, in works that helped to shape and reflect masculinity in Maya civilization. In this thought-provoking book, preeminent scholar Stephen Houston turns his attention to the crucial role of young males in Classic Maya society, drawing on evidence from art, writing, and material culture. ![]() “Lucid and engaging, with a secure grasp of the wider anthropological issues at hand, this volume is without question a significant contribution to Maya studies.”-Simon Martin, University of Pennsylvania MuseumFrom Yale University Press:
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