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A Rapture / by Thomas Carew by Jean-Emile Laboureur
A Rapture / by Thomas Carew
Jean-Emile Laboureur
A Rapture / by Thomas Carew
Jean-Emile Laboureur
1877 - 1943 (biography)An illustrated book of the first edition of Thomas Carew's famous erotic poem, "A Rapture". Jean-Emile Laboureur updates the Renaissance-era composition with his signature Modernist style, the figures in a contemporary landscape - a park, perhaps - wrought in a streamlined, angular Art Deco manner. The book itself is in very good condition with a clean spine, sturdy binding, and nearly flawless sheets, with its original batiked paper wraps that appear as new. The dust jacket exhibits tears and age toning.
Written in the late 1620s, the Cavalier Poet's poem quickly became famous - and infamous - not only for its colorful description of intimacy and female pleasure, but also for pointedly addressing the double standards held by Renaissance society for men and women - questioning why it is that one is praised for his exploits as the other is shamed for hers. From the Poetry Foundation:
The poem opens as a suasoria in which the poet invites his mistress, Celia, to enjoy the delights of lovemaking; it rapidly modulates into a witty, sensuous, and to some readers shocking celebration of the female body. ...What raises "A Rapture" above the meaner beauties of Renaissance erotica is not only the lush precision of its imagery but also its conclusion, in which Carew seriously addresses the issue of the sexual double standard, asking why that one word "Honour" should mean such different and apparently contradictory things for men and women.