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Sisters of Salome (2002) is a book by Toni Bentley.

Abstract

"The origins of the art of exotic dancing lie in English drama and Viennese opera: Oscar Wilde’s 1893 play Salome, and Richard Strauss’s 1905 opera based on it, brought onto the stage a female character who captured and dominated the audience with the raw power of her naked body. Her Dance of the Seven Veils shocked and fascinated, and Salome became a pop icon on both sides of the Atlantic ... This book details the Salomania craze and four remarkable women who personified Salome and her seductive dance. Bentley shows how each embraced the persona of the femme fatale and transformed the misogynist idea of a dangerously sexual woman into a form of personal liberation."--Publisher's description

Editions

Published in New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002.

Contents

Part I. Salome: The Daughter of Iniquity 17

• 1. The Wilde Story 19
• 2. The Dance of the Seven Veils 27
• 3. The Salome Craze 33

Part II. Maud Allan: The Cult of the Clitoris 47

• 4. The Crime 49
• 5. The Vibion 57
• 6. The Trial 72

Part III. Mata Hari: The Horizontal Agent 85

• 7. Intoxication 87
• 8. The Little Dutch Girl 90
• 9. The Hindu Hoax 95
• 10. The Scapegoat 109
• 11. The Legendary Backlash 124

Part IV. Ida Rubinstein: The Phallic Female 129

• 12. The Queen of the Nile 131
• 13. The Russian Salome 135
• 14. Diaghilev' Dilettante 140
• 15. The Male Martyr 145
• 16. La Folie d'Ida 154
• 17. Salvation 161

Part V. Colette: The Mental Hermaphrodite 167

• 18. The Kiss 169
• 19. Sido's Masterpiece 172
• 20. Willy's Ghost 175
• 21. The Barrier of Light 182
• 22. The Mature Seductress 191

External links

• [ Google Books]