Erotic fiction
][citation needed] The Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter (later made into a film by Fellini) is an ancient Roman novel, which has partially survived, narrating the misadventures of an impotent man named Encolpius, who has been cursed by the god Priapus.
[3] From the medieval period, there is the Decameron (1353) by the Italian Giovanni Boccaccio (made into a film by Pasolini) which features tales of lechery by monks and the seduction of nuns from convents.
[4] From the 15th century, another classic of Italian erotica is a series of bawdy folk tales called the Facetiae by Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini.
The Tale of Two Lovers (Latin: Historia de duobus amantibus) written in 1444 was one of the bestselling books of the 15th century, even before its author, Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, became Pope Pius II.
[5] The 16th century was notable for the Heptaméron of Marguerite de Navarre (1558), inspired by Boccaccio's Decameron and the notorious I Modi which married erotic drawings, depicting postures assumed in sexual intercourse, by Giulio Romano, with obscene sonnets by Pietro Aretino.
[7][8] Later works in the same genre include La Retorica delle Puttane (The Whore's Rhetoric) (1642) by Ferrante Pallavicino;[9][10] L'école des filles (The school for girls) (1655), attributed to Michel Millot and Jean L'Ange.
[15] Donald Thomas has translated L'École des filles, as The School of Venus, (1972), described on its back cover as "both an uninhibited manual of sexual technique and an erotic masterpiece of the first order".
[18] Chorier's Dialogues of Luisa Sigea goes a bit further than its predecessors in this genre and has the older female giving practical instruction of a lesbian nature to the younger woman plus recommending the spiritual and erotic benefits of a flogging from willing members of the holy orders.
[20] The School of Women first appeared as a work in Latin entitled Aloisiae Sigaeae, Toletanae, Satyra sotadica de arcanis Amoris et Veneris.
This manuscript claimed that it was originally written in Spanish by Luisa Sigea de Velasco, an erudite poet and maid of honor at the court of Lisbon and was then translated into Latin by Jean or Johannes Meursius.
A unique work of this time is Sodom, or the Quintessence of Debauchery (1684), a closet play by the notorious Restoration rake, John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester in which Bolloxinion, King of Sodom, authorises "that buggery may be used O'er all the land, so cunt be not abused", which order, though appealing to soldiery, has deleterious effects generally, leading the court physician to counsel: "Fuck women, and let Bugg'ry be no more".
One genre, which vies in oddness with the English "Merryland" productions, was inspired by the newly translated Arabian Nights and involved the transformation of people into objects which were in propinquity with or employed in sexual relationships: such as sofas, dildos and even bidets.
The climax of this trend is represented in French philosopher Diderot's Les Bijoux indiscrets (1747) in which a magic ring is employed to get women's vaginas to give an account of their intimate sexual histories.
In the late 18th century, such works as Justine, or the Misfortunes of Virtue and 120 Days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade were exemplars of the theme of sado-masochism and influenced later erotic accounts of sadism and masochism in fiction.
An important publisher of erotic material in the early 19th century was George Cannon (1789–1854), followed in mid-century by William Dugdale (1800–1868) and John Camden Hotten (1832–1873).
[33][34] Notable European works of erotica at this time were Gamiani, or Two Nights of Excess (1833) by Frenchman Alfred de Musset and Venus in Furs (1870) by the Austrian author Leopold von Sacher-Masoch.
Toward the end of the 19th century, a more "cultured" form of erotica began to appear by poets such as Algernon Charles Swinburne, who pursued themes of paganism, lesbianism and sado-masochism in such works as Lesbia Brandon and in contributions to The Whippingham Papers (1888) edited by St George Stock, author of The Romance of Chastisement (1866).
Pioneering works of gay male erotica from this time were The Sins of the Cities of the Plain (1881),[37] which features the celebrated Victorian transvestite duo of Boulton and Park as characters,[38] and Teleny, or The Reverse of the Medal (1893).
[39][40][41] Two important publishers of erotic fiction at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th were Leonard Smithers (1861–1907)[39] and Charles Carrington (1867–1921),[42] both of whom were subject to legal injunctions from the British authorities in order to prohibit their trade in such material.
[43] Erotic fiction published by Carrington at this period includes Raped on the Railway: a True Story of a Lady who was first ravished and then flagellated on the Scotch Express (1894)[44][45][46][47] and The Memoirs of Dolly Morton (1899) set on a slave-plantation in the Southern States of America.
[48][49][50] 20th-century erotic fiction includes such classics of the genre as: Suburban Souls (1901), published by Carrington and possibly written by him also;[51] The Confessions of Nemesis Hunt (issued in three volumes 1902, 1903, 1906),[52] attributed to George Reginald Bacchus,[53][54] printed by Duringe of Paris for Leonard Smithers in London;[39] Josephine Mutzenbacher (1906) by Anon.
(probably George Reginald Bacchus), and My Lustful Adventures (1911) by the pseudonymous 'Ramrod'; Manuel de civilité pour les petites filles à l'usage des maisons d'éducation (1917) and Trois filles de leur mère (1926) by Pierre Louys;,[58][59] a memoir My Life and Loves by Frank Harris published in four volumes (1922-1927), Story of the Eye (1928) by Georges Bataille; Tropic of Cancer (1934) and Tropic of Capricorn (1938) by Henry Miller; The Story of O (1954) by Pauline Réage; Helen and Desire (1954) and Thongs (1955) by Alexander Trocchi; Ada, or Ardor (1969) by Vladimir Nabokov; Journal (1966), Delta of Venus (1978)[60] and Little Birds (1979) by Anaïs Nin[61] and The Bicycle Rider (1985) by Guy Davenport and Lila Says (1999) by an anonymous author.
A study found that the most popular of the Armed Services Editions paperbacks distributed to American soldiers during World War II "are novels that deal frankly with sexual relations (regardless of tone, literary merit and point of view, no matter whether the book is serious or humorous, romantically exciting or drably pedestrian)".
[citation needed] Like Nabokov's Lolita, Johannes Linnankoski's The Song of the Blood-Red Flower is also often described as erotic novel, only a little explicit and cleverly cloaked in gentler romance.
The critic Charles Stone has argued that pornographic technique is the "union of banality, obscenity, and repetition", and contains just the "rudiments" of plot, style, and characterization, while anything that is not sexually stimulating is avoided.
Its literary status is unparalleled among erotic fiction and it has been described by critic Stephen Marche in the Los Angeles Review of Books as "one of the world's great novels, if not simply the greatest.
Platforms such as nifty.org presented a vast library of erotic literature categorized according to the narrative, including heterosexual, gay, bisexual and transgender themes.
