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Eroticism is a quality that causes sexual feelings, as well as a philosophical contemplation concerning the aesthetics of sexual desire, sensuality, and romantic love. That quality may be found in any form of artwork, including painting, sculpture, photography, drama, film, music, or literature. It may also be found in advertising. The term may also refer to a state of sexual arousal or anticipation of such – an insistent sexual impulse, desire, or pattern of thoughts.
The role of sadism and masochism in fiction has attracted serious scholarly attention. Anthony Storr has commented that the volume of sadomasochist pornography shows that sadomasochistic interest is widespread in Western society; John Kucich has noted the importance of masochism in late-19th-century British colonial fiction. This article presents appearances of sadomasochism in literature and works of fiction in the various media.
Erotic art is a broad field of the visual arts including any artistic work intended to evoke erotic arousal, usually depicting human nudity and/or sexual activity. It has included works in almost any visual medium, including drawings, engravings, films, paintings, photographs, and sculptures. Some of the earliest known works of art include erotic themes, which have recurred with varying prominence in different societies throughout history. However it has also been widely considered taboo, with either social norms or laws restricting its creation, distribution, and possession, particularly when it is deemed to be "pornographic", "immoral", or "obscene".
Erotic literature comprises fictional and factual stories and accounts of eros – passionate, romantic or sexual relationships – intended to arouse similar feelings in readers, in contrast to erotica, which focuses more specifically on sexual feelings. Other common elements are satire and social criticism. Much erotic literature features erotic art, illustrating the text.
Henry Spencer Ashbee was a book collector, writer, and bibliographer. He is notable for his massive, clandestine three-volume bibliography of erotic literature published under the pseudonym of Pisanus Fraxi.
Rachilde was the pen name and preferred identity of novelist and playwright Marguerite Vallette-Eymery. Born near Périgueux, Dordogne, Aquitaine, France during the Second French Empire, Rachilde went on to become a symbolist author and the most prominent woman in literature associated with the Decadent Movement of fin de siècle France.
Lesbian erotica deals with depictions in the visual arts of lesbianism, which is the expression of female-on-female sexuality. Lesbianism has been a theme in erotic art since at least the time of ancient Rome, and many regard depictions of lesbianism to be erotic.
Maurice Girodias was a French publisher who was the founder of the Olympia Press. At one time he was the owner of his father's Obelisk Press. He spent most of his productive years in Paris.
Venus in the Cloister or The Nun in her Smock, known in the original French as Vénus dans le cloître, ou la Religieuse en chemise (1683) is a work of erotic fiction by the Abbé du Prat, which is a pseudonym for an unknown author. Candidates for whom this might be include Jean Barrin and François de Chavigny de La Bretonnière.
Whore dialogues are a literary genre of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment and a type of erotic fiction. The first example was the Ragionamenti by Pietro Aretino, followed by such works as La Retorica delle Puttane (1642) by Ferrante Pallavicino; L'Ecole des Filles (1655), attributed to Michel Millot and Jean L'Ange and also known as The School of Venus; The Dialogues of Luisa Sigea by Nicolas Chorier—known also as A Dialogue between a Married Woman and a Maid in various editions. Such works typically concerned the sexual education of a naive to less older woman by an experienced older woman and often included elements of philosophising, medical folklore, satire and anti-clericalism. The later works in this genre, such as that by Chorier, indulge in a more sophisticated type of sexual fantasy and are the precursors of the more explicit pornography which followed in Europe.
Pornography is the portrayal of sexual subject matter for the exclusive purpose of sexual arousal. Pornography may be presented in a variety of media, including magazines, animation, writing, film, video, and video games. The term does not include live exhibitions like sex shows and striptease. The primary subjects of present-day pornographic depictions are pornographic models, who pose for still photographs, and pornographic actors who engage in filmed sex acts.
The history of erotic depictions includes paintings, sculpture, photographs, dramatic arts, music and writings that show scenes of a sexual nature throughout time. They have been created by nearly every civilization, ancient and modern. Early cultures often associated the sexual act with supernatural forces and thus their religion is intertwined with such depictions. In Asian countries such as India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Japan and China, representations of sex and erotic art have specific spiritual meanings within native religions. The ancient Greeks and Romans produced much art and decoration of an erotic nature, much of it integrated with their religious beliefs and cultural practices.
Charles Carrington (1857–1921) was a leading British publisher of erotica in late-19th- and early-20th-century Europe. Born Paul Harry Ferdinando in Bethnal Green, England on 11 November 1867, he moved in 1895 from London to Paris where he published and sold books in the rue Faubourg Montmartre and rue de Chateaudun; for a short period he moved his activities to Brussels. Carrington also published works of classical literature, including the first English translation of Aristophanes' "Comedies," and books by famous authors such as Oscar Wilde and Anatole France, in order to hide his "undercover" erotica publications under a veil of legitimacy. His books featured the erotic art of Martin van Maële. He published a French series La Flagellation a Travers le Monde mainly on English flagellation, identifying it as an English predilection.
My Secret Life, by "Walter", is the memoir of a gentleman describing the author's sexual development and experiences in Victorian England. It was first published in a private edition of eleven volumes, at the expense of the author, including an imperfect index, which appeared over seven years beginning around 1888.
A Night in a Moorish Harem is an erotic novella published in 1896 under the pseudonym "Lord George Herbert". It is written in the first person in the persona of a shipwrecked British sailor, recounting the night he spent in a Moroccan harem with nine concubines of different nationalities. The literary topos of the harem is a typical example of Western literary orientalism.
Venus in India, or Love adventures in Hindustan is a pornographic novel by the pseudonymous "Charles Devereaux" published by Auguste Brancart in Brussels in 1889. It purports to be the autobiography of a British Army officer serving on the North West Frontier of India, describing his erotic adventures with Lizzie Wilson and the three daughters of Colonel Selwyn. His wife Louie remains in England. He sometimes refers to Théophile Gautier's Mademoiselle de Maupin during the narrative which is set during the third Afghan War. It is divided into two volumes and the content of a third volume is occasionally referred to in the text but this was never published.
Raped on the Railway: a True Story of a Lady who was first ravished and then flagellated on the Scotch Express is an anonymous English pornographic story published in 1894 by Charles Carrington under the imprint "Society of Bibliophiles" or "Cosmopolitan Bibliophile Society". The victim, a married woman, is raped by a stranger in a locked railway compartment and, in a trope common in later Victorian pornography, is depicted as ultimately taking pleasure in the act: she is then flagellated by her brother-in-law for the latter transgression.
Monsieur Vénus is a novel written by the French symbolist and decadent writer Rachilde. Initially published in 1884, it was her second novel and is considered her breakthrough work. Because of its highly erotic content, it was the subject of legal controversy and general scandal, bringing Rachilde into the public eye.
Victorian erotica is a genre of sexual art and literature which emerged in the Victorian era of 19th-century Britain. Victorian erotica emerged as a product of a Victorian sexual culture. The Victorian era was characterised by paradox of rigid morality and anti-sensualism, but also by an obsession with sex. Sex was a main social topic, with progressive and enlightened thought pushing for sexual restriction and repression. Overpopulation was a societal concern for the Victorians, thought to be the cause of famine, disease, and war. To curb the threats of overpopulation, sex was socially regulated and controlled. New sexual categories emerged as a response, defining normal and abnormal sex. Heterosexual sex between married couples became the only form of sex socially and morally permissible. Sexual pleasure and desire beyond heterosexual marriage was labelled as deviant, considered to be sinful and sinister. Such deviant forms included masturbation, homosexuality, prostitution and pornography. Procreation was the primary goal of sex, removing it from the public, and placing it in the domestic. Yet, Victorian anti-sexual attitudes were contradictory of genuine Victorian life, with sex underlying much of the cultural practice. Sex was simultaneously repressed and proliferated. Sex was featured in medical manuals such as The Sexual Impulse by Havelock Ellis and Functions and Disorders of Reproductive Organs by William Acton, and in cultural magazines like The Penny Magazine and The Rambler. Sex was popular in entertainment, with much of Victorian theatre, art and literature including and expressing sexual and sensual themes.
Hannah Jane Thompson is a British academic and professor of French and critical disability studies at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her research focuses primarily on 19th and 20th century French literature, especially the novel.
References
- ↑ Sanchez, Nelly (Spring–Summer 2010). "Rachilde ou la genèse (possible) de Monsieur Vénus". Nineteenth-Century French Studies. University of Nebraska Press. 38 (3 & 4): 252–263. doi:10.1353/ncf.0.0142. ISSN 0146-7891. S2CID 190249895.
- ↑ Hawthorne, Melanie (2001). Rachilde and French women's authorship: from decadence to modernism. U of Nebraska Press. pp. 244–245. ISBN 0-8032-2402-8.
- Bullough, Vern L. (2000). "Who wrote my secret life? An evaluation of possibilities and a tentative suggestion". Sexuality & Culture. 4 (1): 37–60. doi:10.1007/s12119-000-1011-y. S2CID 144830385.
- Green, Jonathon; Karolides, Nicholas J., eds. (2005). The encyclopedia of censorship . Facts on File library of world history. Infobase Publishing. pp. 69, 368. ISBN 0-8160-4464-3.
- Kearney, Patrick J. (1982). A history of erotic literature. Parragon. p. 126. ISBN 1-85813-198-7.
- Sutherland, John, ed. (2009). The Longman companion to Victorian fiction. Pearson Longman. p. 515. ISBN 978-1-4082-0390-3.
- Schick, İrvin Cemil (1999). The Erotic Margin: sexuality and spatiality in alteritist discourse. London: Verso. pp. 117–18. ISBN 1-85984-732-3.
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