The erotic imagination
Subtitle: French histories of perversity
By: Vernon A. Rosario.
Series: Ideologies of desire
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 244
Subjects: Erotica -- France -- History -- 18th century; Erotic literature, French; Sex customs -- France -- History -- 18th century; Hygiene, Sexual -- France -- History -- 18th century
Description: Drawing upon the writings of literary figures such as Diderot, Rousseau, Zola, Flaubert, and Huysmans, and physicians and psychologists such as Tardieu, Binet, and Charcot, Vernon Rosario argues that the modern idea of the perverse first emerged in late 18th-century France and was shaped largely by the strange confluence of medical writings, patient confessions, and literary narratives.

Filled with extraordinary case studies and written in prose that is as lively and entertaining as it is insightful, this book offers both a history of the erotic imagination and its narrative expressions, as well as a fascinating mirror in which our contemporary ambivalence about sexuality - from the acrimonious rhetoric of family values to censorship of pornography and hostility towards gays - takes on surprising new significance.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 211-237) and index.