116-470 French Erotic Literature, 1560-1954

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Credit Points

Coordinator

Prerequisites

A major in French (Post-VCE French stream) or equivalent.

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Subject Description

This subject examines French erotic literature from an historical, critical and theoretical perspective. The corpus to be studied includes: playfully bawdy poetry from the late Renaissance (Les blasons du corps féminin), libertine narrative works from the classical period of the Ancien Régime (1650-1790), with a focus on connections between eroticism, free-thinking (libertinage, philosophie) and anti-clericalism, the advent of Romantic eroticism (Musset's Gamiani), the continuation/resurrection of the Sadean tradition in the twentieth century by Georges Bataille (Histoire de l'oeil), concluding with one of the best-known works of French pornography, Pauline Réage's L'Histoire d'O. The final part of the course is devoted to an examination of the varying social significance of French erotic literature over time, general questions of pornography and representation, feminist critiques of pornography, and French critiques of Anglo-Saxon "sexual correctness".

Assessment

Attendance and participation in discussion, one 2000 word seminar paper (subsequently written up), a two hour final examination.

Prescribed Texts

Students are expected to purchase all texts, with the exception of Les Blasons du corps féminin, copies of which will be provided.

• "Les Blasons du corps féminin" in, La Poésie du XVIe siècle. Paris, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1975.
• Abbé du Prat, Vénus dans le cloître ou la religieuse en chemise. Actes Sud, 1994.
• NO_AUTHOR, Thérèse philosophe. Paris, Actes Sud, 1992.
• Mirabeau, Ma Conversion ou le libertin de qualité, suivi de Hic et Hec. Paris, UGE, 1995 (Collection 10/18).
• Marquis de Sade, La Philosophie dans le boudoir. Paris, UGE, 1972 (Collection 10/18).
• Alfred de Musset, Gamiani, ou deux nuits d'excès. ed. et pref. Jean-J. Pauvert, Paris, Ramsay, 1992.
• Georges Bataille, Madame Edwarda; Le Mort; L'Histoire de l'oeil. Paris, UGE, 1973 (Collection 10/18).
• Pauline Réage, Histoire d'O. Paris, LGF, 1982 (Livres de poche).