ABSTRACT

Huxley maintains that, in the past, literature too had its Manichaeans; writers, that is, who described humans’ rationality and spirit and ignored their physical reality on the grounds that it was it vulgar. Description of the body was restricted to certain parts of the face: the eyes, whose expressive eloquence was emphasized, the lips, the source of visual messages, and the hair, also able to emit signals. For many writers the human body was comparable to a continent, of which they explored few territories. Only pornographers and certain burlesque artists concerned themselves with the buttocks, genitals, and other intimate areas usually carefully concealed from public gaze.