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These contradictory viewpoints reveal the Western world's prickly relationship with seduction, a topic that has been frightening and fascinating us as far back as we can imagine. How have the cultural mores of heterosexual courtship shifted over the course of history, and how have they stayed the same? How have generations of women reacted to the thrill, freedom, or threat presented in the figure of the masculine seducer--the Byrons and Casanovas--and the direly unequal consequences for women--and among women, depending on race and class--in the game of pursuing and being pursued?In Seduction, Clement Knox argues that the western world's preoccupation with seduction narratives truly begins with the Enlightenment, when human actions came to be recognized as a battle between reason and passion--rather than sin and virtue.