"Then there is the point that if university presses' tax-exemption were reliant solely on their parent charities' status, they would be free to publish whatever they liked, or whatever made them the most money; they could sell tax-exempt pornography." - The Remedy, 1999, page 253
Although OUP's eagerness to change its image is well known - who can forget the row when it dumped its poets? - the academic press's imminent move into porn is still likely to cause spluttering at High Tables.
Adding the Kamasutra (in a new "sexually explicit" translation) to its World Classics list may make scholarly sense, but less clear is the rationale for "graphic" Indian colour illustrations involving eye-watering feats of erotic gymnastics. Also far from donnish is a press release boasting about the inclusion of "4 types of love, 6 unusual acts, 7 kinds of sex, 8 acts of oral sex, 10 sexual strokes of a man and 17 positions." More port, Professor?
Translated by Wendy Doniger, Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions, University of Chicago and Sudhir Kakar, Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard University
The Kamasutra is the oldest extant Hindu textbook of erotic love. It is about the art of living - about finding a partner, maintaining power in a marriage, committing adultery, living as or with a courtesan, using drugs - and also about the positions in sexual intercourse. It was composed in Sanskrit, the literary language of ancient India, sometime in the third century of the common era, probably in North India. It combines an encyclopaedic coverage of all imaginable aspects of sex with closely observed sexual psychology and a dramatic novelistic narrative of seduction, consummation and disentanglement. Best known in English through the highly mannered, padded, and inaccurate nineteenth-century translation of Sir Richard Burton, the text is presented here in an entirely new translation into clear, vivid, sexually frank English, together with three commentaries: translated excerpts from the earliest and most famous Sanskrit commentary (13th century) and from a twentieth-century Hindi commentary, and explanatory notes by the two translators.
The lively and entertaining introduction by Wendy Doniger discusses the history of the text and its reception in India and Europe, analyses its attitudes toward gender and sexual violence, and sets it in the context of ancient Indian social theory, scientific method, and sexual ethics.
The Kamasutra will be published on 28 March, 2002 (£14.99 Hardback)
What is The Kamasutra...
And here, the bullet points go heart-shaped - how sexy!
The title -
The author -
The contents -
But also...
This book can be viewed as an ancient lifestyle manual, a fairy tale, a product of the imagination, a satire, a soap opera, and a biography of human passion.
For more information or to arrange an interview with Wendy Doniger please contact Claire Pemberton on 01865 267911 or e-mail pembertc@oup.co.uk
The Kamasutra - the most famous book on sex ever published - has never before been accurately translated into English, in the 1700 years since it was written. The most widely used translation, by Richard Burton in 1883, is full of mistranslations, inaccuracies, and flaws.
On 28 March 2002 the real text will be revealed when the Kamasutra is published in the Oxford World's Classics series acknowledging its deserved place in the classic canon.
The new translation by Wendy Doniger (historian of religions) and Sudhir Kakar (psychoanalyst and Hindu speaker) puts right the mistakes of previous translations, strips out the later additions usually embedded in Vatsyayana's text, and uses clear, vivid, sexually frank English to reproduce the original tone of the book.
The new translation of the Kamasutra:
For more information about what this new translation of the Kamasutra reveals please contact Claire Pemberton on 01865 267911 or e-mail pembertc@oup.co.uk
Wendy Doniger is in London from 17 - 20 March and is available for interview.