Gender and Genius: Towards a Feminist Aesthetics

Gender and Genius: Towards a Feminist Aesthetics by Battersby, Christine. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780253205780.

During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, women were blamed for having too much passion, imagination, and sexual appetite. By the late eighteen century, however, these qualities had been valued and appropriate for male artists. As new and old concepts of woman and genius clashed, there evolved a rhetoric of sexual apartheid which today still affects our perceptions of cultural achievement.