Whore dialogues
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"Whore dialogues" were a popular literary genre during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. These are dramatic conversations between an older, experienced woman and a younger, inexperienced maiden. They combine sex education, medical folklore, and erotic literature.
Examples include the Ragionamenti (1534–36) by Pietro Aretino, The School of Venus (1655), Académie des dames ou le meursius francais (1659), and Venus in the Cloister (1683). Together, these books form the cornerstoen of 17th 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