Whore dialogues
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
"Whore dialogues" were a popular literary genre during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.
Examples include the Ragionamenti (1534–36) by Pietro Aretino, The School of Venus (1655), Venus in the Cloister (1683), and A Dialogue Between a Married Lady and a Maid (1740). These are dramatic conversations between an older, experienced woman and a younger, inexperienced maiden. They combine sex education, medical folklore, and erotic literature.
It is a striking aspect of this early European erotica that there are so many female protagonists. Female dialogues was a literary device that was to be repeated in works such as John Cleland’s Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure and the Marquis de Sade’s Juliette and 120 Days.
Lucian's Dialogues of the Heterae are a precursor to the whore dialogues of Renaissance literature.
References
When Flesh Becomes Word: An Anthology of Early Eighteenth-Century Libertine Literature (2004) by Bradford K. Mudge
See also
