Before revision: 109-122 Definitions Because the nature of what is erotic is fluid,Evans, David T., Sexual Citizenship: The Material Construction of Sexualities, (New York: Routledge, 1993) early definitions of the term attempted to conceive eroticism as some form of sensual or romantic love or as the human sex drive (libido); for example, the Encyclopédie of 1755 states that the erotic "is an epithet which is applied to everything with a connection to the love of the sexes; one employs it particularly to characterize...a dissoluteness, an excess".Encyclopédie (1755), quoted in Lynn Hunt ed., Eroticism and the Body Politic (London 1991) p. 90
After revision: Libertine literature such as those by John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester evoked eroticism to its readers.109-122 Definitions Because the nature of what is erotic is fluid,Evans, David T., Sexual Citizenship: The Material Construction of Sexualities, (New York: Routledge, 1993) early definitions of the term attempted to conceive eroticism as some form of sensual or romantic love or as the human sex drive (libido); for example, the Encyclopédie of 1755 states that the erotic "is an epithet which is applied to everything with a connection to the love of the sexes; one employs it particularly to characterize...a dissoluteness, an excess".Encyclopédie (1755), quoted in Lynn Hunt ed., Eroticism and the Body Politic (London 1991) p. 90