by Cal Y. Pygia © (Essays)

Although some suspect that Claude Le Petit, Michel Millot, Jean L'Ange, or Paul Scarron may have been the culprit, no one knows for certain who wrote L'Escole des filles, ou La Philosophie des dames, divisee en deux dialogues (The Girls School, or The Philosophy of the Ladies, Divided into Two Dialogues) (1655). However, criminologist Berl Kutchinsky sees its publication and that of two other classics of erotica, La Puttana Errante (The Wayward Prostitute) (1650-1660) and Nicholas Chorier's Satyra Sotadica de Arcanis Amoris et Veneris (c. 1650), as the having constituted what Lynn Hunt calls the "invention of pornography" as a modern literary genre.

Diarist Samuel Pepys helped to ensure the fame--or notoriety--of The Girls School. He purchased the book for his wife to translate from French into English, but found the volume entirely too "bawdy" and "lewd" for this purpose. He decided, however, that, for educational purposes, he himself might read the dialogues, although he burned the book after he'd finished reading it, lest it be discovered among the other volumes of his library to the damage of his reputation. Pepys had also read The Wayward Prostitute, and found The Girls School even "worse" (or better?) than the other volume.

These books share a common structure. They are written in the form of dialogues wherein an older woman teaches a younger woman (or women) the art of love, based, in large measure, upon her own sexual experiences. In The Girls School, the protégé learns from her mentor that girls exist for but one purpose, "fucking": "We were created for Fucking, and when we begin to fuck we begin to live, and all young People's Actions and Words ought to tend thereto."

In Schooling Sex: Libertine Literature and Erotic Education in Italy, France, and England, 1534-1685, James Grantham Turner has little to say concerning The Wayward Prostitute and Satyra Sotadica, but much to say, indeed, about The Girls School. The book, consisting of dialogues between Fanchon and her (slightly) older cousin Suzanne, is made up of two parts, Turner observes: "In the first part

. . . Suzanne instructs. . . Fanchon in the mechanics of sex and the legitimacy of pleasure; in the second part Fanchon recounts her physical initiation with her neighbor Robinet," after which "both women. . . construct a 'Ladies Philosophy.'" Almost certainly written by a man, The Girls School purports to be a series of dialogues between women, representing what Turner terms "female impersonation" as "the norm in male-authored sexual discourse."

In Chorier's book, "the speakers of his dialogues are Tullia and Octavia," Turner says, who "continually quote and imitate other writers," allowing the author to range over both history and literature in his discussion of all things sexual. The form of the novel, however, is, Turner suggests, simplicity itself: "On the eve of her wedding, Octavia seethes with desire but knows nothing about its anatomy. . . . Tullia has been instructed by Octavia's mother to instruct the younger woman," and, "as the bashful Octavia passes each stage of her initiation, she is introduced to more perverse and multiplex activities, and her role in the narration grows correspondingly fuller."

The upshot of Octavia's education, Turner says, is an undermining of "not only the traditional taboos, but [also of] the supremacy of the heterosexual and genital model." All sexual acts become permissible and even desirable, and Octavia herself, who "is bashful and tongue-tied at the beginning" is, by the end of her lessons, "herself recounting how her mother Sempronia swallows the sperm of her lover, the monk Chrysogonus, and how he in turn had persuaded her by describing another couple who practice this delight." In a playful pun, Octavia's tutor tells her that her relation of these anecdotes amounts to a "salsa res or 'salty matter,' meaning both the man's seed and the utterance in Octavia's mouth."

Satyra Sotadica is comprised of a "seven-dialogue, three-volume structure," Turner observes, which "is further marked by prefatoria and appendices," the first part of which, originally "published independently, consists of five 'Colloquia' or dialogues, themselves containing embedded narratives of the speaker's earlier experiences"; the second part of which "combines erotic philosophy with a series of orgiastic 'postures'"; and part three of which "interweaves theoretical speculation, anticlerical satire, descriptive anecdotes like the 'salty' fellatio-scenes, and portraits of contemporaries." The purpose of the preface ("Warning to the Reader"), Turner states, is to pretend that the work's reputed author, Aloisia Siega "wrote a strictly moral work" with the purpose of "exposing the whoredoms of the aristocracy," a "smokescreen" that "rapidly clears, however," as the dialogues get underway.

One of the most monumental and lasting effects of the "invention of pornography" is the liberation of millions of men and women from the artificial restraints upon their sexuality. The demolishment of taboos and the encouragement of sexual experimentation beyond the confines of heterosexual and genital lovemaking, derived, in part from the cataloguing of sexual desire and the frank and erotic depiction of the vast variety of sexual indulgences, both in text and in illustrations and paintings, which liberated readers from their fears of the forbidden while spurring them to try new and different acts which, prior to the appearance of such classics as The Girls School, The Wayward Prostitute, and Satyra Sotadica, would have been not only unlikely, but also downright dangerous. Some libertines literally lost their heads in prudish and hypocritical times!

Because of the "invention of pornography," men and women enjoy analingus, anal intercourse, bondage and discipline, bukkake, cross dressing, cunnilingus, dildo use, exhibitionism, fellatio, frottage, homosexual and lesbian delights, group sex, masturbation, penile-vaginal intercourse, sensual massage, tit fucking, transsexual couplings, voyeurism, and all manner of other sexual joys. (A list of paraphilias, for example, indicates some of the more unusual objects to which people have been, and are, sexually attracted, including amputees, statues, pain, strangulation, feces, vomit, tears or crying, insects, enemas, breast milk, mucus, body piercing and tattoos, and even dead bodies.)

Heterosexual, genital intercourse is merely one of many, many possibilities for the modern "libertine," thanks in no small part to the "invention of pornography" as a modern literary genre, and, best of all, perhaps, the library of erotica available to men and women today, which allows them, as Turner says L'Escole allowed Pepys, "to enjoy a kind of sex without owning to a sexual relationship."

With books as our sexual partners, we no longer need anyone but ourselves with whom to enjoy the vast variety of sexual behavior authors have opened to us.

Enjoy!

The End

More tales on http://www.literotica.com