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20 - Erotic Literature in History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 April 2024

By
James Grantham Turner
Edited by
Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks  and
Mathew Kuefler
Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Mathew Kuefler
Affiliation:
San Diego State University
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Summary

Fervent expressions of erotic desire, the beauty and terror of passionate arousal, are here uncovered in religious texts, creation myths, ‘arts of love’, poetry and fiction across four millenia and twenty-four cultures. The chapter starts with an example known throughout the world: the Hebrew love poem preserved as The Song of Songs or Song of Solomon, translated into many languages including German, Chinese and Yoruba, emulated by Oscar Wilde and Toni Morrison. It argues that the Song and related literature are significant for the frank celebration of mutuality and orgasm, and the psychological understanding of cruelty and loss, rather than for their supposed spiritual meanings. These central themes are traced back to the most ancient narratives of primal copulation (including the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh) and forward to intensely sexual episodes in Milton, Goethe, James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence and women authors from Mediaeval mystics up to the present. A closely related literary genre turns love-making into an art form, cultivated for its own sake: examples come from ancient Egypt and Rome, the Indian Kama Sutra, the Arabic Perfumed Garden, the Modi of Aretino in Renaissance Italy, and French, Chinese and Japanese novels of sexual instruction and adventure.

Keywords

Pietro Aretinocreation mythseroticafertility religionKama SutraPerfumed Gardensexual posturesSaikakuSong of Songsyin-yang
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge World History of Sexualities , pp. 443 - 466
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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References

Further Reading

Al-Nafzāwī, ʻUmar Ibn Muḥammad. The Perfumed Garden of Sensual Delight. Trans. Jim Colville. London: Kegan Paul International, 1999.Google Scholar
Aretino, Pietro. Dialogues (Ragionamenti). Trans. Raymond Rosenthal. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Aretino, Pietro. Sonnets on the Modi. In Bette Talvacchia. Taking Positions: On the Erotic in Renaissance Culture, 198–227. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Burton, Sir Richard. The Erotic Traveler, ed. Leigh, Edward. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1993.Google Scholar
Calza, Gian Carlo. Poem of the Pillow, and Other Stories by Utamaro, Hokusai, Kuniyoshi and Other Artists of the Floating World. 2010; London: Phaidon, 2016.Google Scholar
Furlotti, Barbara, Rebecchini, Guido, and Wolk-Simon, Linda, eds. Giulio Romano: Art and Desire in the Renaissance. Mantua, Italy: Palazzo Te, 2019.Google Scholar
Gerstle, C. Andrew, ed. Collected Erotic Texts of the Early Modern Period. Multiple volumes. Kyoto: Kokusai Nihon Bunka Kenkyu Centre (International Research Center for Japanese Studies), 2002–present.Google Scholar
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Erotic Poems. Trans. David Luke. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Gulik, R. H. van. Erotic Colour Prints of the Ming Period. 1951; Leiden: Brill, 2004.Google Scholar
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Jones, Sumie, ed. Imaging/Reading Eros. Bloomington, IN: East Asian Studies Center, 1996.Google Scholar
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Turner, James Grantham. Libertines and Radicals in Early Modern London: Sexuality, Politics and Literary Culture, 1630–1685. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001; repr. 2005.Google Scholar
Turner, James Grantham. One Flesh: Paradisal Marriage and Sexual Relations in the Age of Milton. 1987; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Turner, James Grantham. Schooling Sex: Libertine Literature and Erotic Education in Italy, France, and England, 1534–1685. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turner, James Grantham. ed. Sexuality and Gender in Early Modern Europe: Institutions, Texts, Images. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Vātsyāyana, . Kāma Sūtra, ed. and trans. Amal Shib Pathak. New Delhi: Chaukhambha, 2014.Google Scholar
Yu, Li (attributed author). Rou putuan (The Prayer Mat of Flesh). Trans. Patrick Hanan as The Carnal Prayer Mat. New York: Ballantine Books, 1990.Google Scholar
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