The Lustful Turk, or Lascivious Scenes from a Harem is a pre-Victorian British exploitation erotic epistolary novel first published anonymously in 1828 by John Benjamin Brookes and reprinted by William Dugdale. However, it was not widely known or circulated until the 1893 edition.
The novel consists largely of a series of letters written by its heroine, Emily Barlow, to her friend, Sylvia Carey. When Emily sails from England for India in June 1814 her ship is attacked by Moorish pirates and she is taken to the harem of Ali, dey of Algiers. Ali rapes her and subjects her to his will, awakening her sexual passions. Emily's debasement continues when Ali insists on anal sex, arousing the horror of her correspondent Sylvia, who expresses her indignation at Ali's behaviour, in a letter that the latter intercepts. Annoyed at her attitude, Ali arranges for Sylvia to be abducted and brought to the slave market of Algiers. After an elaborate charade in which Ali pretends to be a sympathetic Frenchman, bidding to save her from sexual slavery, and engaging her in a fake marriage, he deflowers her and awakens her sexuality, as he had done with Emily. Revealing his true identity Ali enjoys both girls together. This sexual idyll is eventually terminated when an addition to the harem objects to anal rape, cuts off Ali's penis with a knife, and then commits suicide. [1] Seemingly unfazed by this, Ali has "his lost members preserved in spirits of wine in glass vases" which he presents to Emily and Sylvia, sending them back to England with these tokens of his affection. [2]
The novel also incorporates interpolated stories concerning the erotic misadventures of three other girls abducted into the harem, and enlarges on the fate of Emily's maid Eliza who, presented by Ali to Muzra, bey of Tunis, is bound, flogged and raped in turn. [3]
The book was one of those condemned as obscene by Lord Chief Justice Campbell when Dugdale was prosecuted in 1857. [4]
The Lustful Turk uses the contemporary conventions of the novel of sensibility and Gothic romance and its exotic Oriental themes are influenced by the life, adventures and writings of Lord Byron. [5] It was influential on many other works of erotica, and the theme of the virgin who is forcibly introduced to sexual acts and later becomes insatiable in her appetite for the carnal is common in later erotica. [6] Such works include The Way of a Man with a Maid , a classic work of Victorian erotica concerning the forcible seduction of a girl called Alice by a Victorian gentleman; May's Account of Her Introduction to the Art of Love, first published in the Victorian erotic periodical The Pearl and The Sheik written by Edith Maude Hull, published in 1921. [7]
A film adaptation of The Lustful Turk was directed in 1968 by Byron Mabe with the screenplay written by David Friedman and starring Abbe Rentz, Linda Stiles and Gee Gentell. [8] [9]
Ingrid Steeger played Eliza in the Erwin C. Dietrich production The Lustful Turk (1971).
In the mystery novel Die For Love by Barbara Mertz (under the pseudonym Elizabeth Peters), plagiarism of The Lustful Turk is a minor plot point. [10]
Whereas Steven Marcus employed The Lustful Turk in his construction of the placeless realm of pornotopia in Victorian erotica, later writers have stressed the importance of the orientalist setting in generating a further sexualised charge [11] —the harem as a sort of erotic finishing-school. [12]
Erotica is any literary or artistic work that deals substantively with subject matter that is erotic, sexually stimulating or sexually arousing but is not generally considered to be pornographic. Erotic art may use any artistic form to depict erotic content, including painting, sculpture, drama, film or music. Erotic literature and erotic photography have become genres in their own right.
The Sleeping Beauty Quartet is a series of four novels written by American author Anne Rice under the pseudonym of A. N. Roquelaure. The quartet comprises The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, Beauty's Punishment, Beauty's Release, and Beauty's Kingdom, first published individually in 1983, 1984, 1985, and 2015, respectively, in the United States. They are erotic BDSM novels set in a medieval fantasy world, loosely based on the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty. The novels describe explicit sexual adventures of the female protagonist Beauty and the male characters Alexi, Tristan and Laurent, featuring both maledom and femdom scenarios amid vivid imageries of bisexuality, homosexuality, ephebophilia and pony play.
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 that includes any artistic work intended to evoke erotic arousal. It usually depicts human nudity or sexual activity, and has included works in various visual mediums, 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. This is particularly the case when it is deemed pornographic, immoral, or obscene.
Erotic literature comprises fictional and factual stories and accounts of eros intended to arouse similar feelings in readers. This contrasts 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.
Tentacle erotica or tentacle rape is a type of pornography most commonly found in Japan which integrates traditional pornography with elements of bestiality and a fantasy, horror, or science-fiction theme. It is found in some horror or hentai titles, with tentacled creatures having sexual intercourse, predominantly with females, or to lesser extent, males. Tentacle erotica can be consensual but frequently contains elements of rape.
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.
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.
The Pearl: A Magazine of Facetiae and Voluptuous Reading was a pornographic monthly magazine issued in London during the mid-Victorian period by William Lazenby. It was closed down by the British authorities for violating contemporary standards of obscenity.
The Romance of Lust, or Early Experiences is a Victorian erotic novel written anonymously in four volumes during the years 1873–1876 and published by William Lazenby. Henry Spencer Ashbee discusses this novel in one of his bibliographies of erotic literature. In addition the compilers of British Museum General Catalogue of Printed Books list this book.
The Way of a Man with a Maid is an anonymous, sadomasochistic, erotic novel, probably first published in 1908. The story is told in the first person by a gentleman called "Jack", who lures women he knows into a kind of erotic torture chamber, called "The Snuggery", in his house, and takes considerable pride in meticulously planned rapes which he describes in minute detail.
Édouard-Henri Avril was a French painter and commercial artist. Under the pseudonym Paul Avril, he was an illustrator of erotic literature. His career saw collaboration with influential people like Octave Uzanne, Henry Spencer Ashbee and Friedrich Karl Forberg.
William Dugdale was an English publisher, printer, and bookseller of politically subversive publications and pornographic literature in England during the 19th century. By the 1850s he had become "the principal source of such publications in the country". Despite the numerous police raids on his shops and spending many years in prison he remained in the book trade for over forty years.
James Campbell Reddie was a 19th-century collector and author of pornography, who, writing as "James Campbell", worked for the publisher William Dugdale. According to Henry Spencer Ashbee, Reddie was self-taught and viewed his works from a philosophical point of view.
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 has been classified by some as a typical example of Western literary orientalism.
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.
Convent pornography, convent erotica, friar erotica, priest erotica, monk erotica, or clergy erotica includes paintings, sculpture, photographs, dramatic arts, music and writings that show scenes of erotic or sexual nature involving clergy.
Pornotopia is an idea in critical theory describing an imagined space determined by fantasies and dominated by human sexual activity, expressed in and encompassing pornography and erotica. The word was coined by American literary critic Steven Marcus in his 1966 book The Other Victorians, deriving inspiration from nineteenth-century English literature on sexuality by moralists, physicians and erotic authors.
Forced seduction is a theme found frequently in Western literature wherein man-on-woman rape eventually turns into a genuine love affair. A popular example is Luke and Laura from the American soap opera General Hospital.
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.
The full text of The Lustful Turk at Wikisource
