The Cambridge Companion to Erotic Literature

This Companion offers an introduction to key topics in the study of erotic literature from antiquity to the present.

Bradford K. Mudge (Edited by)

9781316635339, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 7 September 2017

290 pages, 5 b/w illus.
22.7 x 15.3 x 1.8 cm, 0.44 kg

The Cambridge Companion to Erotic Literature offers an introduction to key debates in the study of erotic literature from antiquity to the present. It addresses one of the longest standing controversies in literary history: the boundary between acceptable and unacceptable treatments of human sexuality. Whether scurrilous Roman satire, irreverent Restoration drama, or bold Modernist novel, erotic literature pushes the boundaries of the acceptable and challenges the conventions of more mainstream literatures. In fifteen chapters that range from ancient Greece and Rome to twentieth-century American, English, French, and Dutch literature, experts in the field confront a variety of related topics, such as the definition and scope of erotic literature, the nature of textual pleasure, historical shifts in the understanding of the normal and the perverse, the relationship between gender and genre, sexual violence, homosexuality, sadomasochism, necrophilia, satire, pornography, etc. Students new to the scholarship are provided with a clear and useful introduction; those already familiar with the field are given an exciting glimpse into the most recent work.

1. Eros and Literature Bradford K. Mudge
2. Classical Antiquity and Modern Erotic Literature Daniel Orrells
3. Performances of Suffering: Secular and Devotional Eros in Late Medieval Writing Sarah Salih
4. Can a Woman Rape a Man?: Rape and the Erotic in Shakespeare's The Rape of Lucrece and Venus and Adonis Elizabeth Robertson
5. The Manuscript Circulation of Erotic Poetry in Early Modern England Ian Moulton
6. The Erotic Renaissance James Grantham Turner
7. Pornography, Procreation and Pleasure in Early Modern England Sarah Toulalan
8. Novel Pleasure Bradford K. Mudge
9. Erotic for Whom?: When Particular Bodies Matter to Romantic Sexuality Richard Sha
10. Emily Dickinson in Love (With Death) Marianne Noble
11. Erotic Bonds Among Women in Victorian Literature Deborah Lutz
12. Guillaume Apollinaire, the Enfer Collection, and Modernist Eroto-Bibliography Collette Colligan
13. Sade, Reage, and Transcending the Obscene Amy Wyngaard
14. 'Nothing could stop it now!': Tennessee Williams, Suddenly Last Summer, and the Intersections of Desire David Greven
15. Dutch Gay Novels of the 1960s and 1970s Gert Hekma.

Subject Areas: Gender studies, gender groups [JFSJ], Literary companions, book reviews & guides [DSRC], Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB], Literature & literary studies [D]