"There is a compelling story to be told about the rise, fall, and transfiguration of the ideal of chastity, and Lisabeth During is the perfect person to tell it. In The Chastity Plot, During reveals how the obsession with chastity has played a powerful role in the history of our moral imagination. The metaphysics of purity continue to haunt literature, religion, and philosophy. The demand for chastity has shaped social institutions and figured in the construction of political power; sexual renunciation has been an ornament to sainthood and a technique of ascetics both sacred and profane"--