Do angels make love? Will the souls of ordinary people feel
sexual pleasure in the next world? Is the aspiration to spiritual
salvation helped or hindered by sexual experience? In Heaven and
the Flesh Clive Hart and Kay Stevenson explore the opinions of
poets and painters on such questions, from the high Renaissance to
the birth of romanticism. Hart and Stevenson analyse the work not
only of canonical writers and artists, such as Milton and
Michelangelo, but also of lesser-known figures such as John Gore
and Richard Tompson, and the sometimes anguished speculations of
philosophers and theologians. As the evidence of witty pornographic
poems and drawings demonstrates, the relationship between sexual
desire and spiritual ascension was not always treated with full
seriousness. This wide-ranging survey offers sometimes surprising
insights into material both familiar and unfamiliar.