When Flesh Becomes Word: An Anthology of Early Eighteenth-Century Libertine Literature

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Bradford K. Mudge
Oxford University Press, 2004 M04 1 - 368 páginas
When Flesh Becomes Word collects nine different examples of British libertine literature that appeared before 1750. Three of these--The School of Venus (1680), Venus in the Cloister (1725), and A Dialogue Between a Married Lady and a Maid (1740)--are famous "whore dialogues," dramatic conversations between an older, experienced woman and a younger, inexperienced maid. Previously unavailable to the modern reader, these dialogues combine sex education, medical folklore, and erotic literature in a decidedly proto-pornographic form. This edition presents other important examples of libertine literature, including bawdy poetry, a salacious medical treatise, an irreverent travelogue, and a criminal biography. The combination of both popular and influential texts presented in this edition provides an accessible introduction to the variety of material available to eighteenth-century readers before the publication of John Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure in 1749.

Dentro del libro

Páginas seleccionadas

Contenido

CHAPTER 2 The Pleasures of a Single Life 1701 The Fifteen Comforts of Cuckoldom 1706 and The Fifteen Plagues of a MaidenHead 1707
59
CHAPTER 3 Gonosologium Novum 1709
87
CHAPTER 4 Venus in the Cloister 1725
143
CHAPTER 5 A Dialogue Between a Married Lady and a Maid 1740
233
CHAPTER 6 A New Description of Merryland 1741
257
CHAPTER 7 The Female Husband 1746
287
NOTES
305
BIBLIOGRAPHY
323
INDEX
327
Derechos de autor

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Página 313 - There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not: The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid.
Página 140 - ... but if he perceive her to be slow, and more cold, he must cherish, embrace, and tickle her. and shall not abruptly, the nerves...
Página 306 - Naples; to which is added, a Discourse on the Worship of Priapus, and its connexion with the Mystic Theology of the Ancients, 4to, 1786.
Página 85 - The Fifteenth Plague Alas! I care not, Sir, what Force you'd use, So I my Maiden-head could quickly lose: Oft do I wish one skill'd in Cupid's Arts, Would quickly dive into my secret Parts; For as I am, at Home all sorts of weather, I skit,— as Heaven and Earth would come together, Twirling a Wheel, I sit at home, hum drum, And spit away my Nature on my Thumb; Whilst those that...
Página xxxi - Truth ! stark naked truth,* is the word, and I will not so much as take the pains to bestow the strip of a gauze-wrapper on it, but paint situations such as they actually rose to me in nature, careless of violating those laws of decency, that were never made for such unreserved intimacies as ours...
Página 289 - But if once our carnal appetites are let loose, without those prudent and secure guides, there is no excess and disorder •which they are not liable to commit, even while they pursue their natural satisfaction; and, which may seem still more strange, there is nothing monstrous and unnatural, which they are not capable of inventing, nothing so brutal and shocking which they have not actually committed.
Página xxi - ... had the same kind of impulse which made Giulio Romano do the original paintings, and inasmuch as the poets and the sculptors, both ancient and modern, have often written or carved— for their own amusement only— such trifles as the marble satyr in the Chigi Palace who is trying to assault a boy, I scribbled off the sonnets which you find underneath each one. The sensual thoughts which they call to mind I dedicate to you, saying a fig for hypocrites. I am all out of patience with their scurvy...
Página 197 - ... half naked. She rested her head upon her mattress, and making reflection upon the state of poor mortals, which she called miserable and wretched, being born with such movements which they condemned, though it was impossible to repress them, she fell into a very great weariness, but it was an amorous one which the fury of her passion had caused and made this young thing taste such a pleasure which ravished her to the very skies. At this moment, nature, inciting all its forces, broke through all...
Página xxiii - Charing Cross and drove to St. Paul's. Then walked to Lime Street. Was to have gone to Woodford with Preston. Was too late. Called Dr. Johnson; not at home. Called on old Cleland.9 Found him in an old house in the Savoy, just by the waterside. A coarse, ugly old woman for his servant.1 His room, filled with books in confusion and dust, was like Dupont's and old Lady Eglinton's, at least old ideas were suggested to me as if I were in a castle. He was drinking tea and eating biscuits. I joined him....

Acerca del autor (2004)

Bradford K. Mudge is Professor of English at the University of Colorado and the author of The Whore's Story: Women, Pornography, and the British Novel, 1684-1830.

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