In this pathbreaking study of three of the most familiar texts in the Chinese tradition--all concerning stones endowed with magical properties--Jing Wang develops a monumental reconstruction of ancient Chinese stone lore. Wang's thorough and systematic comparison of these classic works illuminates the various tellings of the stone story and provides new insight into major topics in traditional Chinese literature. Bringing together Chinese myth, religion, folklore, art, and literature, this book is the first in any language to amass the sources of stone myth and stone lore in Chinese culture. Uniting classical Chinese studies with contemporary Western theoretical concerns, Wang examines these stone narratives by analyzing intertextuality within Chinese traditions. She offers revelatory interpretations to long-standing critical issues, such as the paradoxical character of the monkey in The Journey to the West, the circularity of narrative logic in The Dream of the Red Chamber, and the structural necessity of the stone tablet in Water Margin. By both challenging and incorporating traditional sinological scholarship, Wang's The Story of Stone reveals the ideological ramifications of these three literary works on Chinese cultural history and makes the past relevant to contemporary intellectual discourse. Specialists in Chinese literature and culture, comparative literature, literary theory, and religious studies will find much of interest in this outstanding work, which is sure to become a standard reference on the subject.

John is a college student currently separated from his fiance Laura, while she begins a hot sexual affair with her roommate Christine. Though John is anxious to have Laura back, with Christine now a permanent fixture in Laura's life, the terms of the relationship are about to radically change. Either John agrees to be submissive in a menage a trois with two dominant females, or he's out. Eager to stay in Laura's good graces John agrees to anything, including public humiliation, panty wearing, and Laura's unique punishment for unauthorized masturbation: a locking chastity device. She tricks him into putting it on, not telling him that Christine has the keys. Later he learns from Christine that a key has been hidden in his weekend bag all along. But now, the demanding Christine wants him to consciously choose to remain in chastity! John can't help wonder who's running the relationship, Laura or Christine? As the two femmes take charge, John is trained to serve their every whim, to call them mistress, and play their humiliating sexual games. When he fails to please this daunting duo, he suffers a variety of painful punishments from bondage to whipping to being sodomized with a strap-on. Despite the rough demands of his new life, John finds his surrendering role strangely pleasing, and highly erotic. All misgivings aside, he's still in love with Laura, and willing to slavishly serve both women in order to have her. But how long can this strange menage a trois survive? Will John ever have Laura to himself again? Is Christine really falling in love with him? Although John's journey into chastity has just begun, it's certain to take some curious twists as these two lovely, in charge females turn this wary college boy into their groveling slave.

In The Chastity Plot, Lisabeth During tells the story of the rise, fall, and transformation of the ideal of chastity. From its role in the practice of asceticism to its associations with sovereignty, violence, and the purity of nature, it has been loved, honored, and despised. Obsession with chastity has played a powerful and disturbing role in our moral imagination. It has enforced patriarchy’s double standards, complicated sexual relations, and imbedded in Western culture a myth of gender that has been long contested by feminists. Still not yet fully understood, the chastity plot remains with us, and the metaphysics of purity continue to haunt literature, religion, and philosophy. Idealized and unattainable, sexual renunciation has shaped social institutions, political power, ethical norms, and clerical abuses. It has led to destruction and passion, to seductive fantasies that inspired saints and provoked libertines. As During shows, it should not be underestimated. Examining literature, religion, psychoanalysis, and cultural history from antiquity through the middle ages and into modernity, During provides a sweeping history of chastity and insight into its subversive potential. Instead of simply asking what chastity is, During considers what chastity can do, why we should care, and how it might provide a productive disruption, generating new ways of thinking about sex, integrity, and freedom.

Writing in a clear and readable style, two leading women of the Jungian school of psychology present this legend as a living myth that is profoundly relevant to modern life. 17 illustrations.

Even though they are immersed in sex-saturated society, millions of teens are pledging to remain virgins until their wedding night. How are evangelical Christians persuading young people to wait until marriage? Christine J. Gardner looks closely at the language of the chastity movement and discovers a savvy campaign that uses sex to "sell" abstinence. Drawing from interviews with evangelical leaders and teenagers, she examines the strategy to shift from a negative "just say no" approach to a positive one: "just say yes" to great sex within marriage. Making Chastity Sexy sheds new light on an abstinence campaign that has successfully recast a traditionally feminist idea—"my body, my choice"—into a powerful message, but one that Gardner suggests may ultimately reduce evangelicalism’s transformative power. Focusing on the United States, her study also includes a comparative dimension by examining the export of this evangelical agenda to sub-Saharan Africa.