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The Kama Sutra is an ancient Indian Sanskrit text on sexuality, eroticism and emotional fulfillment in life. Attributed to Vātsyāyana, the Kama Sutra is neither exclusively nor predominantly a sex manual on sex positions, but rather was written as a guide to the art of living well, the nature of love, finding a life partner, maintaining one's love life, and other aspects pertaining to pleasure-oriented faculties of human life. It is a sutra-genre text with terse aphoristic verses that have survived into the modern era with different bhāṣyas. The text is a mix of prose and anustubh-meter poetry verses. The text acknowledges the Hindu concept of Purusharthas, and lists desire, sexuality, and emotional fulfillment as one of the proper goals of life. Its chapters discuss methods for courtship, training in the arts to be socially engaging, finding a partner, flirting, maintaining power in a married life, when and how to commit adultery, sexual positions, and other topics. The majority of the book is about the philosophy and theory of love, what triggers desire, what sustains it, and how and when it is good or bad.
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 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.
Henry Spencer Ashbee (Walter) 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.
Pierre Louÿs was a French poet and writer, most renowned for lesbian and classical themes in some of his writings. He is known as a writer who sought to "express pagan sensuality with stylistic perfection". He was made first a Chevalier and then an Officer of the Légion d'honneur for his contributions to French literature.
I Modi, also known as The Sixteen Pleasures or under the Latin title De omnibus Veneris Schematibus, is a famous erotic book of the Italian Renaissance in which a series of sexual positions were explicitly depicted in engravings.
Alain Daniélou was a French historian, Indologist, intellectual, musicologist, translator, writer, and notable Western convert to and expert on the Shaivite sect of Hinduism.
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.
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 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 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.
The Sins of the Cities of the Plain; or, The Recollections of a Mary-Ann, with Short Essays on Sodomy and Tribadism, by the pseudonymous "Jack Saul", is one of the first exclusively homosexual works of pornographic literature published in English. The book was first published in 1881 by William Lazenby, who printed 250 copies. A second edition was published by Leonard Smithers in 1902. It sold for an expensive four guineas.
Nalini Balbir is a French Indologist who lives in Paris. She is a scholar of Sanskrit, Prakrit, Pali, Jainism, Buddhism and Hinduism. She was a direct student of Indologist Colette Caillat. She is known for her work on the publication of the Catalogue of the Jain Manuscripts of the British Library published by the Institute of Jainology.
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.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to human sexuality:
Street of Stairs is a 1968 novel by the American dramatist Ronald Tavel. It was published by Olympia Press in a seriously-abridged form—over half of the book was excised—but Tavel later released the original, unabridged version of the book online. It is a pederastic and polyphonic novel that follows the life of Mark, an expatriate in Tangier, Morocco, who falls in love with Hamid, a thief.
Flossie, a Venus of Fifteen is an English erotic novel, first published in 1897.
References
- Hyam, Ronald (1990) Empire and Sexuality: the British experience (Studies in Imperialism), Manchester University Press ISBN 0-7190-2504-4; p. 135
- Jarman, Francis (2005) White Skin, Dark Skin, Power, Dream: collected essays on literature and culture (I. O. Evans Studies in the Philosophy and Criticism of Literature; vol. 27.) Holicong, Pa.: Borgo Press ISBN 0-8095-1188-6, p. 25
- İrvin Cemil Schick (1999) The Erotic Margin: sexuality and spatiality in alteritist discourse. London: Verso ISBN 1-85984-732-3; pp. 117–18
