Erotic fiction is a part of erotic literature and a genre of fiction that portrays sex or sexual themes, generally in a more literary or serious way than the fiction seen in pornographic magazines. It sometimes includes elements of satire or social criticism. Such works have frequently been banned by the government or religious authorities. Non-fictional works that portray sex or sexual themes may contain fictional elements. Calling an erotic book 'a memoir' is a literary device that is common in this genre. For reasons similar to those that make pseudonyms both commonplace and often deviously set up, the boundary between fiction and non-fiction is broad.
Erotic fiction has been credited in large part for the sexual awakening and liberation of women in the 20th and 21st centuries.
History of erotic fiction
Ancient, medieval, and early modern periods 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. The novel is filled with bawdy and obscene episodes, including orgies, ritual sex, and other erotic incidents. The discovery of several fragments of Lollianos's Phoenician Tale reveal that a genre of picaresque erotic novel also existed in ancient Greece. Some of the ancient Greek romance novels, such as Daphnis and Chloe, also contain elements of sexual fantasy.
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. This book was banned in many countries. Even five centuries after publication, copies were seized and destroyed by the authorities in the US and the UK. For instance, between 1954 and 1958 eight orders for destruction of the book were made by English magistrates.Hyde (1964); pp. 71–72
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 () written in 1444 was one of the bestselling books of the 15th century, even before its author, Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, became Pope Pius II. It is one of the earliest examples of an epistolary novel, full of erotic imagery. The first printed edition was published by Ulrich Zel in Cologne between 1467 and 1470.
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.Hyde (1964); pp. 75–76
Aretino also wrote the celebrated whore dialogue Ragionamenti, in which the sex lives of wives, whores and nuns are compared and contrasted.Hyde (1964); pp. 76Ian Frederick Moulton, Before Pornography: erotic writing in Early Modern England (Studies in the History of Sexuality.) Oxford: Oxford University Press 404, 2004, , p. 130 Later works in the same genre include La Retorica delle Puttane (The Whores' Rhetoric) (1642) by Ferrante Pallavicino;Wendy Beth Heller, Emblems of Eloquence: opera and women's voices in seventeenth-century Venice, Berkeley: University of California Press 404, 2003, , p.75James Turner, Libertines and Radicals in Early Modern London: sexuality, politics, and literary culture, 1630–1685. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 404, 2002, , p.3 L'école des filles (The school for girls) (1655), attributed to Michel Millot and Jean L'Ange.Mitchell Greenberg, Baroque Bodies: psychoanalysis and the culture of French absolutism, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 404, 2001, , pp.78–79Muchembled, (2008) p. 90 and The Dialogues of Luisa Sigea () by Nicolas Chorier.Sarah Toulalan, Imagining Sex: pornography and bodies in seventeenth-century England. Oxford: Oxford University Press 404, 2007, , p. 100Alastair J. L. Blanshard, Sex: Vice and Love from Antiquity to Modernity, Chichester: John Wiley and Sons, 2010, , p. 51 Such works typically concerned the sexual education of a naive younger woman by an experienced older woman and often included elements of philosophising, satire and anti-clericalism.Kronhausen (1969), pp. 7–8 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".The original title is L'escole des filles, ou: la philosophie des dames; later editions sometimes ascribe it to M. Mililot (sic). Pascal Durand edited it in 1959.The School of Venus (orig: L'École des filles, ou la Philosophie des dames) by Michel Millot et Jean L'Ange (New American Library 404 1971) (Panther 1972) In his diary Samuel Pepys records reading and (in an often censored passage) masturbating over this work.Hyde (1964); p. 19 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.Muchembled (2008) p. 77 This work was translated into many languages under various different titles, appearing in English as A Dialogue between a Married Woman and a Maid in various editions.Patrick J. Kearney (1982) A History of Erotic Literature. Parragon: 34–46 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. The attribution to Sigea and Meursius was a lie; the true author was Nicolas Chorier.
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".Kronhausen (1969); pp. 26–32
18th century An early pioneer of the publication of erotic works in England was Edmund Curll (1675–1747), who published many of the Merryland books. These were an English genre of erotic fiction in which the female body (and sometimes the male) was described in terms of a landscape.Patrick J Kearney (1982) A History of Erotic Literature. Parragon: 53-7 The earliest work in this genre seems to be Erotopolis: The Present State of Bettyland (1684) probably by Charles Cotton. This was included, in abbreviated form, in The Potent Ally: or Succours from Merryland (1741). Other works include A New Description of Merryland. Containing a Topographical, Geographical and Natural History of that Country (1740) by Thomas Stretzer, Merryland Displayed (1741) and set of maps entitled A Compleat Set of Charts of the Coasts of Merryland (1745). The last book in this genre appears to be a parody of Laurence Sterne's A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768) entitled La souricière. The Mousetrap. A Facetious and Sentimental Excursion through part of Austrian Flanders and France (1794) by "Timothy Touchit".
The rise of the novel in 18th-century England provided a new medium for erotica. One of the most famous in this genre was Fanny Hill (1748) by John Cleland. This book set a standard in literary smut and was often adapted for the cinema in the 20th century. Peter Fryer suggests that Fanny Hill was a high point in British erotica, at least in the eighteenth century, in a way that mainstream literature around it had also reached a peak at that time, with writers like Defoe, Richardson and Fielding all having made important and lasting contributions to literature in its first half. After 1750, he suggests, when the Romantic period began, the quality of mainstream writing and of smut declined in tandem. Writes Fryer: "sex was driven out of the English novel in the latter half of the eighteenth century. The castration of imaginative English literature made the clandestine literature of sex the most poverty stricken and boring in Europe".Peter Fryer (1966) Public Case-Private Scandal, Secker & Warburg, p. 84
French writers kept their stride. 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.Patrick J. Kearney (1982) A History of Erotic Literature. Parragon: 60-5
Other works of French erotica from this period include Thérèse Philosophe (1748) by Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis d'Argens which describes a girl's initiation into the secrets of both philosophy and sex;Mark Steel (2003) Vive la Révolution. London, Scribner; pp. 39–40 The Lifted Curtain or Laura's Education, about a young girl's sexual initiation by her father, written by the French revolutionary politician Comte de Mirabeau; and Les Liaisons dangereuses (Dangerous Liaisons) by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, first published in 1782.
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. De Sade (as did the later writer Sacher-Masoch) lent his name to the sexual acts which he describes in his work.
19th century In the Victorian period, the quality of erotic fiction was much below that of the previous century—it was largely written by 'hacks'. Some works, however, borrowed from established literary models, such as Dickens. The period also featured a form of social stratification. Even in the throes of orgasm, the social distinctions between master and servant (including form of address) were scrupulously observed. Significant elements of sado-masochism were present in some examples, perhaps reflecting the influence of the English public school, where flagellation was routinely used as a punishment.Ronald Pearsall (1969) "The Worm in the Bud: the world of Victorian sexuality", Macmillan; pp. 404–22 These clandestine works were often anonymous or written under a pseudonym, and sometimes undated, thus definite information about them often proves elusive.