Can erotica be literature?

[Wilde woman]

...because there are certainly "classic" works of literature depicting explicit sex, even from the earliest times. Just a quick snippet of names that jump to mind: Sappho, Petronius, Marquis de Sade, D.H. Lawrence. Some even consider Nabokov's Lolita erotica.

I ask because I've recently run across Anais Nin, and I'm wondering if anyone else sees the merit in her work.

What do you think? Where do you draw the line between erotica and pornography?

[Virgil]

I think it has to be literature first. If all it contains is eroticism then it's titlation or porn or porn-esk. If there is a thematic point to the sexuality, as with D.H. Lawrence, then it's literature.

I'm afraid I have not read Anais Nin.

[Dark Muse]

I cannot believe I am actually saying this, (beware this may be a sign of end of days) but I agree with Virgil on this point. I think that works which have a very strong sexuality within them, and are very suggestive and broach upon the erotic can be considered literature if there is a greater point behind the work and if there is a more in depth plot, and if the aspects of sexuality are being used in an artistic way, or symbolic way outside of just the erotica aspect in of itself.

But if a work is written for no other reason than for the sake of highlighting the eroticism and to pardon my frankness, if it seems the only purpose of the work is to get readers horny, than I would not consider that to be literature.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Yeah, I agree with Muse and Virgil. Literature can definitely be erotic, but I don't think erotica can be classified as literature.If I read it, it definitely isn't for it's themes or narrative content. To me, it's like asking of pornography can be film . . . which is a "no."

[ktm5124]

Yes, but if erotica can't be classified as literature, then neither can sci-fi (or fantasy, or any genre).

Of course, I don't classify sci-fi (or more generally, genre fiction) as literature, so I have no problem with this.

[OrphanPip]

I think there's a Susan Sontag essay out there about how pornography can be used as a means of exploring themes of life and death, she concentrated on George Bataille and Sade. I unfortunately haven't read it though.

I'm inclined to agree that literature can contain a significant amount of erotica, but books written simply to arouse readers sexually are unlikely to have much artistic merit. Although, they can be well written, and some erotica can be more literary than other erotica. It's the difference between a weird experimental porno like Behind the Green Door or some of the high budget scripted porn of the late 70s and the contemporary plain sex films of today that don't even bother to include plot. Behind the Green Door doesn't have equal artistic merit of Citizen Cain or even the majority of cruddy mainstream film, but it could be considered superior on an artistic and creative level than other porn.

[Virgil]

I cannot believe I am actually saying this, (beware this may be a sign of end of days) but I agree with Virgil on this point.

:eek::eek2::eek6:
:willy_nilly:

Shocking, isn't it. :D Let's party. :wink5:

:party:

Actually Dark-Muse, we don't disagree much when it comes to literature, or at least I haven't noticed it.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Yes, but if erotica can't be classified as literature, then neither can sci-fi (or fantasy, or any genre).

Of course, I don't classify sci-fi (or more generally, genre fiction) as literature, so I have no problem with this.

Your logic seems completely . . . illogical. Explain, please.

[MarkBastable]

Why wouldn't it?

[BienvenuJDC]

Why wouldn't it?

You know....I was wondering the same thing. Unless it is just pictures, then by definition, it is pornography (the graphy part makes it "graphical")...but if it is in words, then with would be literature. Depending on the quality of writing makes it either good literature or bad literature.......but it's still literature. Would a religious literature not be literature to an atheist? Would evolutionary literature not be literature to a Christian? It's really a no brainer.

[Dark Muse]

:eek::eek2::eek6:
:willy_nilly:

Shocking, isn't it. :D Let's party. :wink5:

:party:

Actually Dark-Muse, we don't disagree much when it comes to literature, or at least I haven't noticed it.

Yes you are right, literature in fact is perhaps the only thing we do agree on.

[Petronius]

Pornography is nothing more than libertine romanticism. How is, let's say, a poem about an orgy any different than a pastel in intellectual depth? The only diference is explicit sexual scenes, unlike pastoral landscapes, are offensive to many people's sense of "decency" and "morals". This is so deeply entrenched in our own cultures that we don't feel comfortable with challenging it, so we try to fabricate alternative reasons to exile this particular subject, such as "it isn't literature", or "it isn't art".

This lies more in humans' perceptions of their own phisiological reactions and the existence of moral categories, where something "pleasing to the eyes", or "heart-pounding", or "spirit lifting", or whatever creates sensations in our upper parts of the body can be "artistic", or "sublime", or at least "beautiful", but something "arousing" is percieved more like an intrusion that we either protect ourselves against or feel vulnerable about.

I didn't mention the mind because most of you seem to agree that underlying themes to the erotica make acceptable forms of literature. What I wonder is, will you push "pornography" in the corner of the most formulaic creations, and allow the process of titilation as a valid psychological theme to explore in art, or do you think arousal as a whole is unworthy?

[MarkBastable]

will you allow the process of titilation as a valid psychological theme to explore in art, or do you think arousal as a whole is unworthy?




I don't think there's any aspect of existence that art couldn't or shouldn't address. If there were - how would that work, practically? Would we determine the subject or theme of a novel or painting and say, "Well, I don't even have to consider the merits of this thing as art, because it's addressing a topic that's on the art-can't-go-there list..."

[LitNetIsGreat]

For me it comes down, as always, to the quality of writing, is the quality of writing good enough, do the characters work, does the work as a whole stand up to further enquiry?

[TheFifthElement]

You know....I was wondering the same thing. Unless it is just pictures, then by definition, it is pornography (the graphy part makes it "graphical")...but if it is in words, then with would be literature. Depending on the quality of writing makes it either good literature or bad literature.......but it's still literature. Would a religious literature not be literature to an atheist? Would evolutionary literature not be literature to a Christian? It's really a no brainer.

Yes, I'm inclined to agree. I suppose the question is whether it is good literature or bad literature, but like any genre there will be a range of quality in there and there's bound to be some which is good. Effectively erotic literature is a genre of literature which explores human sexuality.

I have a lot of time for Anais Nin. She's a passionate, sensual, open, humanistic writer. I've read a number of her books, but the short story collections (Delta of Venus, Little Birds) seem to be the best ones in terms of scope and range of subjects explored. Her writing is beautiful, fantastical, her characters are caricature-esque but I think that it is necessary to create this sense of fantasy (which is what it is, ultimately) to reduce the shock/disgust factor especially as some of the themes she writes about are disturbing, or at least potentially disturbing - necrophelia, incest, rape, paedophilia all appear as subjects in her pages. And of course she writes about sex from an inherently female perspective, albeit that the stories were written for a man, and whilst it's graphic it is also has delicacy and I think that comes across well too. The stories are also non-judgemental, she neither presents the stories in a positive or negative light she merely presents them. It is left to the reader to decide how they feel about them.

Ultimately it is erotic fiction, it's not romance, and the emphasis of the stories is very much on the sexual act, so if you're in any way uncomfortable with that I would recommend giving Nin a wide berth :D

Not bad for a dollar a page though, huh?

[Lokasenna]

For me it comes down, as always, to the quality of writing, is the quality of writing good enough, do the characters work, does the work as a whole stand up to further enquiry?

I agree. And by my personal yardstick, Lawrence fails to be literature; I think the man was a smut peddler, who was being provocative for the mere sake of it. Of course, that's subjective, but I really don't see what seperates him (and those like him) from Mills & Boon in any objective sense.

On a similar note, there is the famous "Bad Sex in Fiction" award presented every year by the Literary Review. Here is the 2009 winner:

http://www.literaryreview.co.uk/badsex.html

And the previous winners:

http://www.literaryreview.co.uk/badsexpreviouspassages.html

[Jozanny]

Loka, Lawrence has the ability to get on my nerves, but smut peddler is a bit harsh; there is a psycho-dynamic interplay between his men and women which is more than just a graphic intimacy peep show for the Edwardian age. Sometimes I can enter into it and sometimes I lose patience with him, but he is certainly not a bawdy lampoonist like Sade.

To my mind Lawrence is a movement writer, trying to break ground.

Wilde, thanks for Anais. I am curious enough to look into a future purchase--cautiously, anyway. I am a tad sensitive about the *dark side,* from my reporting on disability and sex, and also know never to say never, as these folks (http://www.reflectionsedge.com/) push some interesting boundaries with erotica and science fiction. I am not a huge e-zine fan, but the people behind RE know what they're doing.

[Lokasenna]

Loka, Lawrence has the ability to get on my nerves, but smut peddler is a bit harsh; there is a psycho-dynamic interplay between his men and women which is more than just a graphic intimacy peep show for the Edwardian age. Sometimes I can enter into it and sometimes I lose patience with him, but he is certainly not a bawdy lampoonist like Sade.

To my mind Lawrence is a movement writer, trying to break ground.


No, I appreciate that. He really just isn't to my personal taste, that's all. Nor am I keen on the movement he represented, but it's an entirely personal thing.

[Virgil]

I agree. And by my personal yardstick, Lawrence fails to be literature; I think the man was a smut peddler, who was being provocative for the mere sake of it. Of course, that's subjective, but I really don't see what seperates him (and those like him) from Mills & Boon in any objective sense.


I have no idea who Mills and Boon are, but could you at least list which works by Lawrence you consider "provacative for the mere sake of it?"

And what movement are you referring to that he represented?

[Emil Miller]

I appreciate Lokasenna's viewpoint on the Bad Sex awards because that is just what they are. Some are amusing and others downright silly, because trying to describe sex will inevitably lead to hyperbole and make the writer appear ridiculous. If, rather than reading these exagerated descriptions, people just got on with it, they wouldn't be missing anything other than a slight frisson of disappointment that someone else's imagination had presented them with a totally phony experience.

[Wilde woman]

I agree with most of you that a work with erotic scenes must have some literary or artistic merit beyond solely arousing readers to be considered literature. But then we get back to the difficult question of how to establish an author's intent.


What I wonder is, will you push "pornography" in the corner of the most formulaic creations, and allow the process of titilation as a valid psychological theme to explore in art, or do you think arousal as a whole is unworthy?

I don't think that a reader's arousal is an "unworthy" part of literature; sometimes it is an inevitable side effect of erotic scenes. But I agree that titillation could and should be explored as a "valid psychological theme".


I have a lot of time for Anais Nin. She's a passionate, sensual, open, humanistic writer. I've read a number of her books, but the short story collections (Delta of Venus, Little Birds) seem to be the best ones in terms of scope and range of subjects explored. Her writing is beautiful, fantastical, her characters are caricature-esque but I think that it is necessary to create this sense of fantasy (which is what it is, ultimately) to reduce the shock/disgust factor especially as some of the themes she writes about are disturbing, or at least potentially disturbing - necrophelia, incest, rape, paedophilia all appear as subjects in her pages. And of course she writes about sex from an inherently female perspective, albeit that the stories were written for a man, and whilst it's graphic it is also has delicacy and I think that comes across well too. The stories are also non-judgemental, she neither presents the stories in a positive or negative light she merely presents them. It is left to the reader to decide how they feel about them.

Thank you, Fifth. I've been reading The Delta of Venus on and off, though I usually pick and choose the stories rather than reading through chronologically. She strikes me as a very thoughtful writer as well, exploring themes like unconventional desire, gender roles, lust vs. love, and the Other, but showing just as much (if not more) of the characters' emotional states than their physical feelings during the act.

Jozanny - thanks for the website. It looks very edgy and I'm looking forward to perusing some selections.

[Jozanny]

Virgil, I called Lawrence *a movement author*, not Loka, and what I mean by that is Lawrence pushes his own agenda. In contemporary terms, however, I would not label Lawrence as a writer of erotica.

[Bastable]

I would have to agree with what has already been stated, literature can be erotic, but not so the other way around. The best example of erotic literature that comes to my mind is probably song of solomon.

[stlukesguild]

Virgil- I think it has to be literature first. If all it contains is eroticism then it's titlation or porn or porn-esk. If there is a thematic point to the sexuality, as with D.H. Lawrence, then it's literature.

Dark Muse- I think that works which have a very strong sexuality within them, and are very suggestive and broach upon the erotic can be considered literature if there is a greater point behind the work and if there is a more in depth plot, and if the aspects of sexuality are being used in an artistic way, or symbolic way outside of just the erotica aspect in of itself.

But if a work is written for no other reason than for the sake of highlighting the eroticism and to pardon my frankness, if it seems the only purpose of the work is to get readers horny, than I would not consider that to be literature.

I question the notion that a work of writing must first be a work of "literature" or must have some "greater" point than that of merely examining of celebrating the erotic before it may be considered seriously... or before it amounts to literature. As another asked, if writing dealing with the erotic cannot be literature, then how can science-fiction or fantasy or any other genre count as literature without the same requirements that the work be about something more that science fiction/fantasy... that the science fiction/fantasy elements be but a small part of the larger artistic whole.

A great deal of poetry is erotic in intent: the poet sings the praises of his or her beloved. Here we might do well to question what amounts to "eroticism"? Is a painting or photograph only "erotic" if it displays certain parts of the body? Is a work of writing only erotic if it explicitly describes certain acts or certain parts of the body... or uses certain "taboo" words? If so... by what logic? How does the portrayal of a given body part (which all of us have... or at least all of us have one set of these or the other:sosp:... to say nothing of::ciappa:) or the portrayal of certain acts which all of us have engaged in (or are forever in quest of) and which amount to some of the most intense experiences of of lives... as well as the very reason for our existence... be defined as a subject unworthy of art. No less a poet than W.B. Yeats proclaimed that the only subjects worthy of serious contemplation were sex and death. Eros et Mort. This dichotomy has long existed in the arts.

It would seem to me that what it all comes down to is how well something is done. Science-fiction or fantasy done exceptionally well is worthy of being called literature. Eroticism done exceptionally well is equally worthy of the term. Regardless of the genre, the work in question must be judged upon the same criteria: language, use of metaphor, symbolism, character development, setting, formal structure, originality, etc...

In one last passing thought... does anyone not find it ironic that we would not even think to question the artistic merits of a painting of a crucifixion... which is essentially the image of horrific torture and eventual death... and yet an image of love-making almost immediately raises questions as to its artistic validity.:confused:

[Quark]

I would not label Lawrence as a writer of erotica.

Nor would I. There's a difference between erotica and merely mentioning sex. Lawrence--even at his raciest--isn't particularly arousing. Really, all he's trying to do is bring a Realist eye to sexualiy--something that many writers around the time were trying to do. His sex scenes are more like analyses than anything else.

For better examples of literary eroticism, we might consider the works of Ovid or maybe Rousseau's Confessions. These try to recreate eroticism, but they also question what exactly makes something erotic. So much erotica just retreads the same ground (ample breasted female, muscular male, parts fit together), but Rousseau's and Ovid's amorous passages raise issues about what constitutes the sexually pleasurable. There seems to be some literary value in that.

[ktm5124]

Virgil- I think it has to be literature first. If all it contains is eroticism then it's titlation or porn or porn-esk. If there is a thematic point to the sexuality, as with D.H. Lawrence, then it's literature.

Dark Muse- I think that works which have a very strong sexuality within them, and are very suggestive and broach upon the erotic can be considered literature if there is a greater point behind the work and if there is a more in depth plot, and if the aspects of sexuality are being used in an artistic way, or symbolic way outside of just the erotica aspect in of itself.

But if a work is written for no other reason than for the sake of highlighting the eroticism and to pardon my frankness, if it seems the only purpose of the work is to get readers horny, than I would not consider that to be literature.

I question the notion that a work of writing must first be a work of "literature" or must have some "greater" point than that of merely examining of celebrating the erotic before it may be considered seriously... or before it amounts to literature. As another asked, if writing dealing with the erotic cannot be literature, then how can science-fiction or fantasy or any other genre count as literature without the same requirements that the work be about something more that science fiction/fantasy... that the science fiction/fantasy elements be but a small part of the larger artistic whole.

A great deal of poetry is erotic in intent: the poet sings the praises of his or her beloved. Here we might do well to question what amounts to "eroticism"? Is a painting or photograph only "erotic" if it displays certain parts of the body? Is a work of writing only erotic if it explicitly describes certain acts or certain parts of the body... or uses certain "taboo" words? If so... by what logic? How does the portrayal of a given body part (which all of us have... or at least all of us have one set of these or the other:sosp:... to say nothing of::ciappa:) or the portrayal of certain acts which all of us have engaged in (or are forever in quest of) and which amount to some of the most intense experiences of of lives... as well as the very reason for our existence... be defined as a subject unworthy of art. No less a poet than W.B. Yeats proclaimed that the only subjects worthy of serious contemplation were sex and death. Eros et Mort. This dichotomy has long existed in the arts.

It would seem to me that what it all comes down to is how well something is done. Science-fiction or fantasy done exceptionally well is worthy of being called literature. Eroticism done exceptionally well is equally worthy of the term. Regardless of the genre, the work in question must be judged upon the same criteria: language, use of metaphor, symbolism, character development, setting, formal structure, originality, etc...

In one last passing thought... does anyone not find it ironic that we would not even think to question the artistic merits of a painting of a crucifixion... which is essentially the image of horrific torture and eventual death... and yet an image of love-making almost immediately raises questions as to its artistic validity.:confused:

I think there is a difference between genre fiction and literature. I think the reason genres exist is because they identify with a source of pleasure or desire. Erotica identifies with sexual desire. Fantasy identifies with the desire for escape, or the desire for power. (We cannot be kings, and we cannot wield magic powers, but we can do so vicariously through fiction.) Science fiction also identifies with the desire for power (for instance, the invincibility and never-ending rise of Paul Atreides), but what differentiates it from fantasy is that it looks toward a very different kind of escape. Instead of looking for an escape into a magical past, which is impossible, it looks forward to a possible future. But I still call this an escape because I feel that science fiction simplifies the world in that it only looks through the lens of reason, science, power, and technology. There is much more to life than that! Indeed, I think these are life's duller aspects.

What separates literature, in my mind, from genre fiction, is that it strives to teach us how to live our lives. Erotica can arouse us every time we read it, but there is no lesson to be learned in erotica, apart from perhaps how to better satisfy our partner in the after-hours. A work of literature, on the other hand, can change our view of the world, change the way we live our lives (in both our long-term goals and our everyday lifestyles), shape our principles, etc. In reading literature, the reader gains something beyond the initial pleasure.

This is not to say that I think every work of literature should be a coming-of-age novel. Just in merely reading about different people in different places, we learn things about life - we are able to compare our lives with theirs, gain experience second-hand, put ourselves in others' shoes, etc.

Before ending, I have to revise my definition of literature slightly. I think there is one other way to test if a text is a work of literature, and that is if it instills the reader with a lasting aesthetic reward. One might argue that this is just a more exalted re-wording of the gratification of desire - that high-quality erotica could instill a lasting aesthetic reward. But I differentiate between the aesthetic and the primitive; I would qualify titillation as primitive, and the aesthetic as something more intellectual and cerebral - while all things boil down to human chemistry, there are clearly more chemical reactions involved in the latter.

What is common to both of these tests I propose is that literature gives the reader lasting rewards; genre fiction does not. In the case of erotica, orgasm lasts for no more than a few minutes. In the case of fantasy, the vicarious power-trip lasts only so long as the imagination cares to replay the scenes of conquest. In science fiction, you are not taught about the world you live in, you are taught about a world that could spring from the world you live in; and you can only imagine the comparative complexities of each world - the real and the hypothetical - as the maker of one is God or the Big Bang (take your pick) and the maker of the other is a very fallible human being, the author of a science fiction. Better, in my mind, to focus on the world we live in, than to hedge your bets on a world that will never fully come about, because no human being is smart enough to paint every brushstroke of the future.

Ah, sorry for the long post! It is certainly an intimidating wall of text...

A simpler way of putting it would be this...

Let's say a fifty-year old man has to choose a bed-partner. He can choose to make love to his fifty-year old wife, a woman of faded beauty but steady devotion, or he can choose to make love to a younger, sprucer woman of half his years, prime in beauty but completely strange to him.

In this peculiar analogy, the man's fifty-year old wife would be literature; the woman of half his years, erotica. For with the wife, there is meaning beyond the sexual act itself. There is emotional intimacy, not just physical.

The same with literature and erotica - emotional intimacy, not just physical.

[stlukesguild]

I think there is a difference between genre fiction and literature.

What is the difference between any of the multiple genres and "literature". To me "Literature" merely presumes writing of a certain level of artistic merit. How are we to imagine that Science-Fiction, Fantasy, or Erotica are inherently different from Romance, Bildungsromance, Drama, History, Memoirs, Criticism, Theology, Biography, Westerns, Poetry, or even "Romance" as of the El Cid/King Arthur/Don Quixote variety... all of which may or may not result in works of real artistic merit.

I think the reason genres exist is because they identify with a source of pleasure or desire. Erotica identifies with sexual desire. Fantasy identifies with the desire for escape, or the desire for power. (We cannot be kings, and we cannot wield magic powers, but we can do so vicariously through fiction.) Science fiction also identifies with the desire for power (for instance, the invincibility and never-ending rise of Paul Atreides), but what differentiates it from fantasy is that it looks toward a very different kind of escape. Instead of looking for an escape into a magical past, which is impossible, it looks forward to a possible future.

And the other genre listed above?

But I still call this an escape because I feel that science fiction simplifies the world in that it only looks through the lens of reason, science, power, and technology. There is much more to life than that! Indeed, I think these are life's duller aspects.

Is all Science-Fiction but an escape? A great deal of it is rather dystopic in its world view... a the best is far more complex than mere escapism (J.L. Borges, Italo Calvino?)... just as the best travel memoirs (Goethe, Johnson, Boswell) is far more than a mere recounting of the passing experiences of a given journey.

What separates literature, in my mind, from genre fiction, is that it strives to teach us how to live our lives.

I don't buy that at all. Blood Meridian teaches us how to live our lives? The Iliad teaches us how to live our lives? One might argue that literature teaches some rather questionable ways of living life. I would argue that literature provides an aesthetic pleasure but it inherently teaches nothing... or rather, if anything, it "teaches" how to view the world through different eyes, different perspectives, etc...

Erotica can arouse us every time we read it, but there is no lesson to be learned in erotica, apart from perhaps how to better satisfy our partner in the after-hours. A work of literature, on the other hand, can change our view of the world, change the way we live our lives (in both our long-term goals and our everyday lifestyles), shape our principles, etc. In reading literature, the reader gains something beyond the initial pleasure.

Nonsense. What lesson do you glean from Hamlet? from Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Tale or Miller's Tale? From Donne's poetry or Poe's Masque of the Red Death? Yes, literature can teach us something, but its purpose is not inherently didactic... and that literature which is (Uncle Tom's Cabin, To Kill a Mockingbird) isn't always the best.

This is not to say that I think every work of literature should be a coming-of-age novel. Just in merely reading about different people in different places, we learn things about life - we are able to compare our lives with theirs, gain experience second-hand, put ourselves in others' shoes, etc.

Yes... but then are you suggesting that putting ourselves in the shoes of the medieval knight, the space traveler, or the amorous lover is inherently inferior to putting ourselves in the shoes of a character in some "proper" drama?

Before ending, I have to revise my definition of literature slightly. I think there is one other way to test if a text is a work of literature, and that is if it instills the reader with a lasting aesthetic reward. One might argue that this is just a more exalted re-wording of the gratification of desire - that high-quality erotica could instill a lasting aesthetic reward. But I differentiate between the aesthetic and the primitive; I would qualify titillation as primitive, and the aesthetic as something more intellectual and cerebral - while all things boil down to human chemistry, there are clearly more chemical reactions involved in the latter.

But certainly there are those who may find the most base form of erotica instills in them a lasting aesthetic reward? The issue again comes down to judging the individual work on a one to one basis as a work of art.

What is common to both of these tests I propose is that literature gives the reader lasting rewards; genre fiction does not.

So J.L. Borges' science fiction, Italo Calvino's fantasy, Goethe's travel writings, Boswell's biographies, Gibbon's history, Cormac McCarthy's westerns, and Ovid's eroticism offer no lasting aesthetic reward?

In the case of erotica, orgasm lasts for no more than a few minutes.

One might argue that the erotic has much more to do with the mind... with seduction and fantasy and sensuality... than with mere orgasm... at least when it attains to the level of art.

A simpler way of putting it would be this...

Let's say a fifty-year old man has to choose a bed-partner. He can choose to make love to his fifty-year old wife, a woman of faded beauty but steady devotion, or he can choose to make love to a younger, sprucer woman of half his years, prime in beauty but completely strange to him.

In this peculiar analogy, the man's fifty-year old wife would be literature; the woman of half his years, erotica. For with the wife, there is meaning beyond the sexual act itself. There is emotional intimacy, not just physical.

??:shocked:?? I would presume that there would be an emotion involved in either instance. Different emotions, certainly... but emotions nonetheless. But this is verging on the suggestion that there are certain subjects... certain human experiences... certain human desires that are inherently unsuited to artistic expression... and others that by virtue of some moral superiority are ideally suited for the same. And yet Cezanne could create a masterpiece out of a pile of apples and any number of poets have created the most exquisite poems from the contemplation of subjects no less base:
"To see the world in a grain of sand..."

[kelby_lake]

I have no idea who Mills and Boon are, but could you at least list which works by Lawrence you consider "provacative for the mere sake of it?"

And what movement are you referring to that he represented?

Mills and Boon is a publishing company who originally published different types of fiction but then started publishing purely romance novels. They are basically drivel, albeit fun drivel, and they're called things like 'The Greek Tycoon's Bride'.

[BienvenuJDC]

After researching the definition of 'literature', just to make sure that I wasn't assuming more than I should, I came up with some criteria for literature. Please give me some of your thoughts and opinions defining literature. Especially those who have studied it as a major (or minor) in school. Feel free to add to or critique my list of criteria.

It seems to me that literature is:

-a collection of writings (not just a couple of sentences as may be found in a blog thread)
- in prose or verse (what other forms may literature take...I'm not 100% on what prose actually is...or is not)
- "expressing ideas of permanent or universal interest" (from Webster)
- "writings having excellence of form or expression" (from Webster)
- relating to or having characteristics of human learning (this one perked my interest...does a piece have to offer learning properties to be considered literature? How can those "learning qualities" be defined?)

EDIT: Does a work have to be published to be literature?

[Quark]

To me "Literature" merely presumes writing of a certain level of artistic merit. How are we to imagine that Science-Fiction, Fantasy, or Erotica are inherently different from Romance, Bildungsromance, Drama, History, Memoirs, Criticism, Theology, Biography, Westerns, Poetry, or even "Romance" as of the El Cid/King Arthur/Don Quixote variety... all of which may or may not result in works of real artistic merit.

Okay, stlukes, but you're talking around the issue. If there is erotica that is literature, then what is it? You've listed some works in other genres that also count as literature, but avoided the one genre that's up for debate here.

[ktm5124]

I don't buy that at all. Blood Meridian teaches us how to live our lives? The Iliad teaches us how to live our lives? One might argue that literature teaches some rather questionable ways of living life. I would argue that literature provides an aesthetic pleasure but it inherently teaches nothing... or rather, if anything, it "teaches" how to view the world through different eyes, different perspectives, etc...


But you have to take into account the time at which The Iliad was conceived. The Iliad certainly does reflect Ancient Greek values. Hector could be held as something of a role model. There is much to be said for the fact that Achilles softens for Priam, giving him the body. These are the heroes that all the Ancient Greeks grew up with, and Homer shaped their characters. The Iliad, perhaps more than any other text in history - save the religious ones - has taught people how to live their lives. Along with The Odyssey, it gave a scattered body of city-states a sense of unity.



Nonsense. What lesson do you glean from Hamlet? from Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Tale or Miller's Tale? From Donne's poetry or Poe's Masque of the Red Death? Yes, literature can teach us something, but its purpose is not inherently didactic... and that literature which is (Uncle Tom's Cabin, To Kill a Mockingbird) isn't always the best.


There is plenty to learn from Hamlet. Scholars have long said that Shakespeare had an unparalleled grasp of humanity - in reading his works, you learn about humanity.

I am not saying that literature's purpose is inherently didactic. In a work of literature, an artist contemplates life, humanity, him or herself. In doing so, the artist shares his knowledge with the reader. It is not the purpose of the endeavor, but a side effect.



Yes... but then are you suggesting that putting ourselves in the shoes of the medieval knight, the space traveler, or the amorous lover is inherently inferior to putting ourselves in the shoes of a character in some "proper" drama?


It's certainly not as rewarding.



But certainly there are those who may find the most base form of erotica instills in them a lasting aesthetic reward? The issue again comes down to judging the individual work on a one to one basis as a work of art.


The aesthetic is more cerebral. The objective of erotica is to arouse the reader. Playboy magazine has the very same objective. I think that most male readers of Playboy would agree that the magazine does a very good job of this. Does this mean that it is art? because it is so well done? The pitfall here is that no matter how well-written erotica may be, its objective is still no more than the arousal of the reader; so if erotica qualifies as art on the condition of being extremely well done, so must Playboy, which is also very well done.



So J.L. Borges' science fiction, Italo Calvino's fantasy, Goethe's travel writings, Boswell's biographies, Gibbon's history, Cormac McCarthy's westerns, and Ovid's eroticism offer no lasting aesthetic reward?


I haven't read any of these, but from what I know of the authors, I would qualify them as literature. I am not saying literature cannot be erotic, or cannot use science fiction as a trope; I am just saying that erotica is not literature, and science fiction is not literature.

Also, we are debating genre fiction here, and biographies and travel writings are not genre fiction. Genre fiction really only appeared towards the end of the 20th century.



One might argue that the erotic has much more to do with the mind... with seduction and fantasy and sensuality... than with mere orgasm... at least when it attains to the level of art.


Of course, every thought we have, and every process of our body is ultimately linked to the mind - to signals from the brain and neurotransmitters. But as I said, there is a lot more chemically going on in our brain when we contemplate a work of literature than when we involuntarily respond, sexually, to a work of erotica.



??:shocked:?? I would presume that there would be an emotion involved in either instance. Different emotions, certainly... but emotions nonetheless. But this is verging on the suggestion that there are certain subjects... certain human experiences... certain human desires that are inherently unsuited to artistic expression... and others that by virtue of some moral superiority are ideally suited for the same. And yet Cezanne could create a masterpiece out of a pile of apples and any number of poets have created the most exquisite poems from the contemplation of subjects no less base:
"To see the world in a grain of sand..."

There is emotion involved, but no emotional intimacy. The man would not love the stranger - there would not be that emotional intimacy.

I am not saying there are subjects restricted to art. It is the treatment of the subject that matters.

[MarkBastable]

The objective of erotica is to arouse the reader

If you say that erotica can't be literature because its objective is to arouse - which is not the objective of literature - then you've answered the question by your definition. Which is debatable, I think.

However, it does suggest another question: can literature be erotic?

[applepie]

The objective of erotica is to arouse the reader

If you say that erotica can't be literature because its objective is to arouse - which is not the objective of literature - then you've answered the question by your definition. Which is debatable, I think.

However, it does suggest another question: can literature be erotic?

I think this is an interesting point. I would have to agree that arousal can certainly be an objective of literature. The main point of books are to make us think and feel. They are also a means of sharing information, but many classics are there to make us "feel" a certain way through the characters. Why would arousal be taboo when we can feel anger, sadness, love, etc as a result of a book? I've read stories classified as erotica, but the story was harsh and lurid to evoke a certain sympathy for the characters. Is it any less literature because it touched on a subject that to many is forbidden?

Mark - I'll have to answer that yes, literature can be erotic, and erotica can be literature :)

[billl]

Here's a critically acclaimed book by a talented writer, that is an excellent exploration of two characters, addressing real aspects of modern society, in an interesting stylistic manner. And hilarious:

Nicholson Baker's Vox
http://www.amazon.com/Vox-Nicholson-Baker/dp/0679742115
("Look Inside" feature gives the first few pages to sample.)

I think it would be going way too far if one were to suggest that the purpose of this particular book was simply to aid in achieving sexual gratification, or that the "erotic" aspect was the only part of it worth considering. And I can certainly imagine that some people would consider it Erotica.

[Quark]

What separates literature, in my mind, from genre fiction, is that it strives to teach us how to live our lives. Erotica can arouse us every time we read it, but there is no lesson to be learned in erotica, apart from perhaps how to better satisfy our partner in the after-hours. A work of literature, on the other hand, can change our view of the world, change the way we live our lives (in both our long-term goals and our everyday lifestyles), shape our principles, etc. In reading literature, the reader gains something beyond the initial pleasure.


What is common to both of these tests I propose is that literature gives the reader lasting rewards; genre fiction does not. In the case of erotica, orgasm lasts for no more than a few minutes. In the case of fantasy, the vicarious power-trip lasts only so long as the imagination cares to replay the scenes of conquest

I understand what you're going for here--it's called ethical criticism--but it might be just a detour for this discussion. When one actually looks at shallow eroticism against literary eroticism, they don't notice any difference in the "lesson" or the duration of the "reward." Take Tennyson's "Sleeping Beauty:"


Year after year unto her feet,
She lying on her couch alone,
Across the purpled coverlet,
The maiden's jet-black hair has grown,
On either side her tranced form
Forthstreaming from a braid of perl:
The slumbrous light is rich and warm,
And moves not on the rounded curl.

The silk star-broider'd coverlid
Unto her limbs itself doth mould
Languidly ever; and, amid
Her full black ringlets downward roll'd,
Glows forth each softly-shadow'd arm
With bracelets of the diamond bright:
Her constant beauty doth inform
Stillness with love, and day with light.

She sleeps: her breathings are not heard
In palace chambers far apart.
The fragrant tresses are not stirr'd
That lie upon her charmed heart.
She sleeps: on either hand upswells
The gold-fringed pillow lightly pressed:
She sleeps, nor dreams, but ever dwells
A perfect form in perfect rest.

Compare Tennyson, a fine literary figure, with Colette Gale in her trashy novel Master: An Erotic Novel of the Count of Monte Cristo. Here is how Gale describes her recumbent beauty:


"Turn over," he said. His voice sounded uneven, and his eyes did not meet hers.

Her heart gave a little jump of nervousness, but Mercedes did as he bid, rolling onto her belly so that she lay across the bed, head on one side, feet facing him on the other. The pile of cushions was to her left, near the head of the bed.

The pressure against her pounding sex was a relief, and she shifted so that her tilted her hips and pressed it more firmly in the bed beneath her. She spread her legs in a gentle vee

Is the difference between these two passages really a moral one? More likely it has something to with how unimaginative, trite, and crass the latter section is. Gale just throws random items in that she thinks her audience will find sexy (pillows, grand sounding names [Mercedes, really?], fluttering hearts, suggestive posing). Tennyson uses some of the same trickes, but look at the different way he handles them. Compare the pillows:


She sleeps: on either hand upswells
The gold-fringed pillow lightly pressed

and


The pile of cushions was to her left, near the head of the bed.

Tennyson's is far better, and not because we learn anything about living our lives. Rather, Tennyson's pillow works because it successful uses the sensation of contact to convey sexual overtones. So much in Tennyson's poem is described by how it touches the woman: tresses on her heart, pillows on her hands, light on her curls. The poem recreates this sensation of depressed consciousness ("She sleeps, nor dreams, but ever dwells") and its sensual, erotic, somatic results.

Gale's piece is laughably bad, and not because there's no moral. The work is just so slip-shod and random. For god's sake, she describes the pillows like she was a GPS or something. Why do we need to know that they're at the head of the bed? What does that do? Nothing. The description is only there because it takes every last ounce of wit from Gale to just create a scene. So instead of some richly suggestive moment like there is in Tennyson's poem, we get this crudely cartesian survey of the room: he was at the foot of the bed, the pillows are at the head, she's stretched out with her feet facing him. Gale's scene is ridiculously stupid, but, again, not because there isn't a lesson. Tennyson doesn't tell us how to live our lives either, but he creates an erotic moment that's far more literary than most erotica.

[TheFifthElement]

Much of J G Ballard's work would probably be considered erotica. Certainly Crash, The Unlimited Dream Company and The Atrocity Exhibition all have erotic elements. Crash in particular. I would certainly consider Ballard's work to be literature.

And Anais Nin, of course. Her work is literary too.

[Jozanny]

I am not quite sure where the lines are being drawn here. I hold some formula driven genres suspect, certainly, but try to keep an open mind. Now, hard pornography would make me wince, and I do not think I could handle certain things, but most of the time I find *smokers* funny, and they do not offend me as long as graphic violence isn't part of the exploitation--my problem with Sade and modern writers who reduce it to titilation is how limiting that is. Sex has consequences--and yet racier authors tend to reduce characters to the shock value, unlike Lawrence, Nabokov, or Henry Miller, perhaps, though I caution I have not opened the Tropic novels yet.

But softer erotica can be beautiful, even spiritual, and like anything else, it can challenge assumptions or follow conventional plot points.

[Wilde woman]

A great deal of poetry is erotic in intent: the poet sings the praises of his or her beloved. Here we might do well to question what amounts to "eroticism"?

Good point. Something that is erotic to one person may be repulsive to another. Even for erotica readers, there must be some books/authors that disgust them, for reasons of sexual orientation or perhaps aesthetic taste. If that is the case, how can we so definitely state that erotica can or cannot be literature? If someone is turned on by Yeats' "Leda and Swan", should we question whether or not the poem is sufficiently "literary"?


What separates literature, in my mind, from genre fiction, is that it strives to teach us how to live our lives.

Are you that one criteria for literature is that it must be didactic? Can a literary work not simply be a cohesive, exciting narrative? And if you say that we can, of course, learn from stories, then how do you know it was the author's intent to teach us something through his/her storytelling?


I haven't read any of these, but from what I know of the authors, I would qualify them as literature.

I'm sorry, but you would not consider Ovid's Amores to be literature? :eek2: Why cannot genre fiction be literature? If Le Morte d'Arthur and Don Quixote are romances (a genre fiction), can they not also be literature?


If you say that erotica can't be literature because its objective is to arouse - which is not the objective of literature - then you've answered the question by your definition. Which is debatable, I think.

I think Mark's hit upon a good point. If the point of literature is NOT to arouse (as so many of you have pointed out), what IS the point of literature?

[ktm5124]

Are you that one criteria for literature is that it must be didactic? Can a literary work not simply be a cohesive, exciting narrative? And if you say that we can, of course, learn from stories, then how do you know it was the author's intent to teach us something through his/her storytelling?


Didactic is the wrong word. You should read my most recent post, where I say that the fact that literature teaches us about life is not its purpose - it's a side effect.



I'm sorry, but you would not consider Ovid's Amores to be literature? :eek2: Why cannot genre fiction be literature? If Le Morte d'Arthur and Don Quixote are romances (a genre fiction), can they not also be literature?


You misread what I wrote. I said that I have not read Ovid, but from what I have heard of him, I would indeed consider his writings to be literature.

I also wrote that Ovid and Don Quixote are not genre fiction. Genre fiction is something that has only come about in the past fifty years at most.

[stlukesguild]

Okay, stlukes, but you're talking around the issue. If there is erotica that is literature, then what is it? You've listed some works in other genres that also count as literature, but avoided the one genre that's up for debate here.

Obviously, what I may define as "erotic" is open to debate. Again, I'm not limiting the erotic to the crude portrayal of certain bodily organs or graphic descriptions of certain acts. Among works that might be defined as "erotic" we might include:

Sappho (a great deal of her poetry)
The Greek Anthology
The Song of Solomon
Theocritus pastorals
Ovid Amors
a good many other Roman texts including the Satyricon
Petrarch's sonnets
Dante's sonnets
Cavalcanti's sonnets
Ronsard's sonnets
certain poems of John Donne
Spenser's Amoretti and Epithalimion
certain tales from Chaucer and Boccaccio
Herrick's Hesperides
Lord John Wilmot's poems... including his poem to Signior Dildo, and his other poems both in praise of and berating the failings of his own manhood
A good portion of the poems of Verlaine
Baudelaire' Les Fleurs du Mal
and any number of individual poems by virtually any poet you can name.

Obviously it would be a challenge to write a novel that focused solely upon a single act of seduction of love-making... although certainly a novel exploring the act of seduction or the efforts to win the beloved are not uncommon.

But you have to take into account the time at which The Iliad was conceived. The Iliad certainly does reflect Ancient Greek values. Hector could be held as something of a role model. There is much to be said for the fact that Achilles softens for Priam, giving him the body.

And what other values do we learn? We see Achilles act like a spoiled brat... abandoning his comrades in a petty dispute over a slave girl. And Agamemnon doesn't fare any better in the dispute... or in his sacrifice of his own daughter. What of the blatant violence... the measure of mankind by sheer brute force? What do we learn as we watch the petty actions of Gods? What of the treatment of women as mere booty to be won? Didn't Plato himself attack Homer on his portrayal of questionable morals? Of course I don't see the role of literature as didactic... teaching us the proper ways of living. Rather it offers a view of the world... warts and all... as perceived by the artist.

There is plenty to learn from Hamlet. Scholars have long said that Shakespeare had an unparalleled grasp of humanity - in reading his works, you learn about humanity.

Certainly... and you learn some not to pleasant things about humanity. This was the problem Tolstoy had with Shakespeare: his amoral stance... his refusal to offer up judgment and to see that good always prevails over evil. One might argue that following Homer, Shakespeare, Virgil, Machiavelli, etc... one might learn how to be a rather bloodthirsty tyrant.

SLG Quote- Yes... but then are you suggesting that putting ourselves in the shoes of the medieval knight, the space traveler, or the amorous lover is inherently inferior to putting ourselves in the shoes of a character in some "proper" drama?

It's certainly not as rewarding.

Considering Don Quixote or the Arthurian Romances, the Cid, Orlando Furioso, the tales of J.L. Borges, Italo Calvino, Yevgeny Zemyatin's We, Orwell's 1984, etc... I would argue that literature that might be termed as "fantasy" or "science fiction" can certainly hold its own. Indeed... what I would argue is that all writing falls within a certain genre. It is when it rises to a certain level ( to quote another post: "writings having excellence of form or expression" according to Webster) that it becomes "literature".

The aesthetic is more cerebral. The objective of erotica is to arouse the reader.

Every genre has its supposed "objective". The objective of a biography is to dispassionately record the facts of a given life. The objective of travel writing is to relate the experiences of the traveler. Boswell and Johnson and Gibbon's and Goethe all shared these objectives... but then they brought something more to what might have been far less in the hands of a lesser writer. Hell, even a treatise on fly fishing can become literature in the right hands (look at Izaak Walton's The Compleat Angler)

Playboy magazine has the very same objective.

Yes it does... and how does a Playboy centerfold differ from this:

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4038/4577126826_49561ac10c_o.jpg

or this...

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3379/4576495601_56aa93acaa_o.jpg

or this?

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3444/4577126896_a8142823fd_o.jpg

There is certainly a difference in terms of pure aesthetic or artistic merit... but the intentions of the paintings have far more in common with the centerfold than many would care to acknowledge.

I think that most male readers of Playboy would agree that the magazine does a very good job of this. Does this mean that it is art? because it is so well done? The pitfall here is that no matter how well-written erotica may be, its objective is still no more than the arousal of the reader; so if erotica qualifies as art on the condition of being extremely well done, so must Playboy, which is also very well done.

And is that not a possibility? If a given photographer achieves a level of aesthetic merit do we simply discount the work because of the intention? There are posters and commercial designs and political cartoons that have all been accepted as "Art" because they attained a certain level that went beyond the expected cliche's for the genre in which they worked.

So J.L. Borges' science fiction, Italo Calvino's fantasy, Goethe's travel writings, Boswell's biographies, Gibbon's history, Cormac McCarthy's westerns, and Ovid's eroticism offer no lasting aesthetic reward?

I haven't read any of these, but from what I know of the authors, I would qualify them as literature. I am not saying literature cannot be erotic, or cannot use science fiction as a trope; I am just saying that erotica is not literature, and science fiction is not literature.

And what I am saying is that Science-Fiction, Fantasy, Westerns, Histories, Biographies, Erotica... any genre (and all writing falls within one genre or another) can rise to the level of literature. Most comes no where near. But that is as true of most realistic dramas or any genre you may choose.

Also, we are debating genre fiction here, and biographies and travel writings are not genre fiction. Genre fiction really only appeared towards the end of the 20th century.

Huh? Where do you get that from? Perhaps it was only with the 20th century that we get publishers and book stores marketing writings according to genre: Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Horror, Vampire Novels, Detective Fiction and Mysteries, Gay and Lesbian Fiction, Historical Romance, Romance/Love, African-American Fiction, Travel, Biography... even "Classics". That doesn't mean that writing of the past could not be categorized in the same way: Dracula in the Horror/Vampire section, Poe in Horror or Detective fiction, The Three Musketeers in Historical Romance, Goethe's Italian Journey under Travel, etc...

There is emotion involved, but no emotional intimacy. The man would not love the stranger - there would not be that emotional intimacy.

Is emotional intimacy a requirement of art? certainly, there are works of art that deal specifically with the lack of emotional intimacy... immediately I think of James' Beast in the Jungle.

[JBI]

Meh; it's all perspective; the erotic is topical, as nature is topical; by necessity, there is something erotic in many other topics as well, especially those that pertain to the positive, or characteristically "feminine" (in the problematic sense of the world, in keeping with old ideas of gender).

In terms of English, I think it really enters in Marlowe's Hero and Leander, which to me seems the most erotic significant poem for a while, and certainly the one that really stands out as explicitly erotic in content, rather than the partial erotic moments to be found in Sir Thomas Wyatt or other poets between them.

However the erotic is an ancient form - it's in all ancient traditions I can think of, and it seems the taboo of erotic, creating the line between decent and indecent that dominates until today is rooted in a biblical reading.

What that means is, for instance, is that an ancient Confucian Ode can detail a sexual affair between two lovers, and act as a model for good, moral literature in China, Korea, Japan, and other countries in the region with direct exposure to Confucian influence, yet in England such a thing would be indecent, and be restricted probably to manuscript for quite a while.

The erotic seems to be one of the most natural, and expressive elements of art - from Sappho to Klimt, Berlioz (who is perhaps one of the most poetic of composers) and beyond - as a genre it is really about our own sensibilities.

Some people, for instance, are uncomfortable sitting through something like Angels in America (whether in theatre or on TV in a beautiful adaptation). Likewise, others are afraid of any real physicality beyond the base - and by base I mean the teenage movie style topless shots that sell to stupid immature audiences (The hideous film Not Another Teen Movie perhaps the best testament of this).


Take this famous Utamaro print for example:
http://www.online-literature.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=29&pictureid=6915

To most audiences in the west, the image of two men fornicating as a piece of artwork is perhaps a little unsettling. I would wager some people would think it distasteful, or vulgar. Are we then to suggest that the reaction is based on a sensibility, or on a cultural expectation.

The same applies to poetry, cinema, fiction, drama, and any other genre.



Of course, the question of the erotic then must be questioned further though - what is it that makes things erotic, and what is the appeal of the erotic? If I were to try and use psychology, I think it would be safe to say that it is a form of dominance, going on between the viewer, artist, and the subject. What I mean is, Marlowe's Leander is a sex object in his own right, from the very first description where Marlowe traces a line down his back toward his buttocks - the fruits of W. C. Williams' Icebox are enslaved in the poem, in that the reader is invited on every reading to enjoy them, and thereby is given dominance over them.

There is a sort of perversion, if one can call it such, in anything describable as erotic, in the sense that the erotic is usually the object of the eroticizer's imagination (the subject) whether they are artist or audience.

In that sense, by praising and eroticizing something like a bound foot in ancient China, or a Harem girl as was the preoccupation of much of 19th century art, or a rejected woman, as is the case in much of Tennyson, or any other such form, what the erotic is doing is essentially creating a positional weakness and vulnerability over the subject - the introversion of power from this positioning does not even occur in the most successful cases, when someone like Marilyn Monroe's utility is her depth of objectification within the mass cultural world.


In that sense, I think it is safe to say that almost all art has a touch of the erotic in it, as all work really creates a positional advantage for the extra-diegetic. What the concept of erotica as a genre functions as though, is the next layer of taking that which is taboo, either because of a sexual timidity, cultural restraint, or violent nature, and convert that into a form of entertainment. In some cases, the form is able to find balance in that it creates a world of progressive understanding - in that it is harmless, as the dominance over a plum is not a cruelty, as the pleasuring of a woman or man is not a violent act in itself - but when you create a world of violent sexual misogyny or violence, as is quite common in the genre of erotica (take the popular series Gor for example, though I admit to never reading a book myself, wikipedia points to some rather disturbing things) and there is a problem.

[stlukesguild]

Yes, JBI, the Japanese Shunga prints are an especially fascinating example of erotica that rises to the level of fine art. Not all of it, of course, but the best work is absolutely exquisite in spite of the graphic nature. Indeed, there is a certain shock that occurs as you peruse these works taking in the absolutely brilliant design, the sensitive line, the gorgeous pattern of the robes outspread, the fine sense of color harmonies and then this moment suddenly strikes: "Holy Christ!... What are they doing!!??":eek2: Intriguingly, the whole of Ukiyo-e prints came from genre (a visual equivalent of the genre fiction?) that were largely dismissed as unworthy by the court painters who were focused upon landscape and images of religious, political, historical figures. Ukiyo-e offered souvenir views of urban Tokyo, portraits of Kabuki performers, images of courtesans, prostitutes, and Geisha, illustrations of "trashy" literature: horror stories, ghost tales, and of course romance and erotica. It was the equivalent of today's soap operas, posters of rock stars, travel brochures, anime and hentai.

[JBI]

Yes, JBI, the Japanese Shunga prints are an especially fascinating example of erotica that rises to the level of fine art. Not all of it, of course, but the best work is absolutely exquisite in spite of the graphic nature. Indeed, there is a certain shock that occurs as you peruse these works taking in the absolutely brilliant design, the sensitive line, the gorgeous pattern of the robes outspread, the fine sense of color harmonies and then this moment suddenly strikes: "Holy Christ!... What are they doing!!??":eek2: Intriguingly, the whole of Ukiyo-e prints came from genre (a visual equivalent of the genre fiction?) that were largely dismissed as unworthy by the court painters who were focused upon landscape and images of religious, political, historical figures. Ukiyo-e offered souvenir views of urban Tokyo, portraits of Kabuki performers, images of courtesans, prostitutes, and Geisha, illustrations of "trashy" literature: horror stories, ghost tales, and of course romance and erotica. It was the equivalent of today's soap operas, posters of rock stars, travel brochures, anime and hentai.

I didn't mean to bring it up as an example of a sort of popular culture, but rather an example of an eroticized subject that makes most Western audiences unsettled a bit. I do not think the intent of homosexual sex in the above photo is for the sake of shock, as much as it is for the sensual enjoyment of such prospective audiences as mentioned above.


My real question is what is the function and definition of erotic? For instance, I do not find bound feet erotic in the slightest, and every time I see a picture of them, I get kind of sick, but there are thousands upon thousands of poems written in erotic styles describing women as such - my question is, as a form of art, does erotica not a) push the limits of fulfilling a sort of inherent perversion in either audience or creator, and b) by necessity imply a form of dominance.

The men and women captured in the above photos are objects; completely. What the genre is doing is playing on a fantasy in the creator's head.

In that sense, I wouldn't see that Hentai stuff as doing something that different; of course, Otaku aesthetics being what they are, it is all a little bit screwed up from my perspective - but does it not have the ability, in terms of form, to reach an artistic level? Anime, as a genre is only a genre, a shell, a medium, the same way an essay, letter, novel, or poem is. Hero in Leander is probably just as perverted, or pretty close to it anyway, as mainstream pornography, if not worse, as its heroes are quite young.

[Quark]

Turning the page

[Krauq]

Turning the page

[Quark]

Meh; it's all perspective; the erotic is topical, as nature is topical;

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by topical.


Take this famous Utamaro print for example:

Oh, dear god.


Of course, the question of the erotic then must be questioned further though - what is it that makes things erotic, and what is the appeal of the erotic?

That's a good question. There's been a lot of condescension on this thread to the idea of pleasure and titillation. It might do some good to ask about what eroticism is before we attack it.


In that sense, I think it is safe to say that almost all art has a touch of the erotic in it, as all work really creates a positional advantage for the extra-diegetic.

In that sense, every indicative sentence would be erotic. "The car filter is broken" would be highly erotic. We're in a extradiegetic point of view looking at the object (the car filter). Our gaze attributes certain qualities ("broken") to the passive object. We, the extradiegetic narrator and reader, are certainly in a positional advantage here.

I think you may be going a little overboard with the subject-object interpretation of the erotic. That's not to say there's nothing there, but clearly not every extradiegetic and advantaged viewpoint is erotic.


Obviously it would be a challenge to write a novel that focused solely upon a single act of seduction of love-making... although certainly a novel exploring the act of seduction or the efforts to win the beloved are not uncommon.

The Red and the Black focuses on two seductions, but, yes, generally it's difficult to find novels dedicated to one action. I don't think the whole novel has to erotic at every moment to call the book erotica, though. Even the trashiest of erotic fiction has some intermission between one love making and the next.

Thanks for the examples, by the way. You listed some I might not have thought of.

[ktm5124]

stlukesguild, I think I may have to concede here. Your last post has quite changed my mind. Thanks for the discussion.

[JBI]

In that sense, every indicative sentence would be erotic. "The car filter is broken" would be highly erotic. We're in a extradiegetic point of view looking at the object (the car filter). Our gaze attributes certain qualities ("broken") to the passive object. We, the extradiegetic narrator and reader, are certainly in a positional advantage here.

I think you may be going a little overboard with the subject-object interpretation of the erotic. That's not to say there's nothing there, but clearly not every extradiegetic and advantaged viewpoint is erotic.


The Car filter is broken is not erotic, that is true, but it also isn't art.

What I was implying was the sense of the erotic implies also a perversion - perhaps a sort of carnivalesque, or quasi-carnivalesque, or perhaps just distorted, perversion of reality, that is found, to some extent in all art.

In order for art to be art, it is by necessity subjective; individual sentences may not be, but the artwork, to function as a creative work, must be subjective. Subjectivity by necessity implies a subject-object relationship - a viewer and a view. Your reaction of disgust to the Japanese print doesn't make that not artwork, nor non-erotic, the same way I don't particularly find men attractive, but can still admire the subjectivity in creation in artists working with male forms across the world.

The eroticism is by necessity subjective, and subjectivity implies a binary. The question, I think, that we aren't agreeing on is defining erotic; you seem to have a specific conception, I just think the erotic is a more inclusive feature.

[Jozanny]

luke, I really don't consider the genre element all that complicated, sorry. Much of art and music and classical works may incorporate erotic themes, but erotica focuses on the sexuality itself as the main motif. There is a difference in kind between Raphael's nudes, in that there is more to it than nipples and breasts, and that now notorious photograph of Marilyn Monroe doing the naughty calendar girl expose. The latter pretty much invites pruient, maybe playful interests. The former carries more than just classical sensuality.

Erotica CAN be literary, but that depends. Something like FAMILY MADNESS, which I read in all about five minutes, doesn't take its theme of incest and lasciviousness seriously. The sexuality is the primary character of the text, and the appetite is the triumphant villain. One can either accept it as a subversive, and yes, arousing treatise, or recoil from it and look away, but realize, as well, that it is a fantasy, because human beings do not engage in such behavior without a price attached to it.

That said, I do not read much in this area, although Anais Nin seems to hover between the exploitation of the appetite and something else, and I am saving her for later.

[Quark]

The Car filter is broken is not erotic, that is true, but it also isn't art.

No, it's not art. I was just showing that words like extradiegetic, positional advantage, and subjective can be applied to many forms of expression. The erotic is just one species of subjectivity, but there are plenty others. There are many, many different subjective modes even within artistic literature. A work like "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" or Book II of the Aeneid are both highly subjective works, but they're not erotic. They're almost antierotic. Browning's and Virgil's poem conjure up feelings of hopelessness, horror, and disgust. These are not particularly erotic. Yet, they are just as subjective as the erotica you describe. So maybe subjectivity isn't the best measurement of the erotic--or, at least, it shouldn't be the only one.

I agree that the erotic is highly subjective (who wouldn't?), but subjectivity is not really the defining characteristic of erotica. To say so would be to mistake a general category for some essential trait. For example, I could say that both chairs and cats have four legs. That's definetly true. They each fall within the general category of four-legged things. But would I really say that "almost all cats have a touch of chair in them," as you said earlier that "almost all art has a touch of the erotic in it"? That sounds kind of silly. Just as there are many differences between things that have four legs, there are huge differences between different modes of artistic, subjective expression. So, while I completely agree that the erotic is subjective ("beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and all that), I don't think you can lump everything subjective together.


What I was implying was the sense of the erotic implies also a perversion - perhaps a sort of carnivalesque, or quasi-carnivalesque, or perhaps just distorted, perversion of reality, that is found, to some extent in all art.

This is more specific. A word like carnivalesque implies that there's some natural or socially agreed upon norm that people are consciously deviating from. Is that what you're going for?


Your reaction of disgust to the Japanese print doesn't make that not artwork, nor non-erotic, the same way I don't particularly find men attractive, but can still admire the subjectivity in creation in artists working with male forms across the world.

I wasn't trying to disqualify it as art. I was just surprised that you would post something so graphic.


The question, I think, that we aren't agreeing on is defining erotic; you seem to have a specific conception, I just think the erotic is a more inclusive feature.

If all you're arguing is that the erotic is subjective, then, yes, I think you're being too inclusive. A definition of the erotic has to be way more specific than that. If it wasn't, then I could say to my girlfriends something highly subjective like "Canadian weather is like a dog being washed by another dog," and she would instantly want to have sex with me. Of course, it doesn't work that way. To be erotic I would have to say something more to the point. I couldn't just say some random subjective thing.

[Sebas. Melmoth]

Pierre Louÿs' The She-Devils is a nasty classic little novella:

http://www.amazon.com/She-Devils-Pierre-Louys/dp/1596543620/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1272988576&sr=1-1

[stlukesguild]

luke, I really don't consider the genre element all that complicated, sorry. Much of art and music and classical works may incorporate erotic themes, but erotica focuses on the sexuality itself as the main motif.

But certainly, one might argue that sexuality is the center of the focus in the paintings I posted or in any number of other works... including paintings by Picasso, Klimt, Schiele, Rodin's sculpture, etc... Mark Twain was famously outraged by the open display of Titian's Venus d'Urbino in the Uffizi Museum, which he argued verged upon pornography:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3379/4576495601_56aa93acaa_o.jpg

Velasquez' Venus, on the other hand, has been infamously referred to by serious art critics as the "finest *** in the history of art". It so outraged one early Feminist that she attacked the painting with a knife.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3444/4577126896_a8142823fd_o.jpg

Certainly, there is more to these paintings than mere sexual display... but then again... one might make the same claim in defense of the better Playboy centerfold spreads. I balk at pointing to the inclusion of classical symbolism and allusion because I am more than aware of the fact that in many instances this simply acted a means of justification for painting the nude. When someone argues that there is a huge difference between the Pin-Up and the painting of Venus, I find myself asking what exactly these differences are (beyond the mere level of artistic skill and the avoidance of the cliche). Again... I don't mean to suggest that the Playboy centerfold is equal to Titian's nudes... but I do recognize that the two works have much more in common than many would care to admit to... comfortably.

[Jozanny]

Well, given that they are representations of sexualized figures, of course they would have things in common. I never snuck into my father's Playboy issues, but I have read that the magazine has a high couture aspect to its eroticism, something that probably brings it fairly close to aesthetic pleasure--but I still have very little difficulty classifying Lawrence and Nabokov as literary authors, and Sade and Family Madness in another league, which qualifies erotica as a genre able to stand on its own legs.

But those legs have variations, a range between smut bordering on degradation, and sex as life affirming. Family Madness might even be considered pornography, not quite hard core by today's industry standards. I am not sure yet whether or not I'm willing to give it any thematic respect, and if so, to what end.

I would have difficulty seeing this novel as a film, as in this instance, the difference between reading and seeing is considerable.

Fifth Element: I started reading Ballard's Crash last night, and it is certainly applicable to this thread ;)!

PS: I might start a discussion thread on it over @ Amazon, especially as it has garnished significant review activity. My only comment for the time being is Ballard seems to romanticize the violence to a point that shields a seasoned reader from emotional vulnerability.

[TheFifthElement]

Fifth Element: I started reading Ballard's Crash last night, and it is certainly applicable to this thread ;)!

PS: I might start a discussion thread on it over @ Amazon, especially as it has garnished significant review activity. My only comment for the time being is Ballard seems to romanticize the violence to a point that shields a seasoned reader from emotional vulnerability.
I'd be interested to hear your views on Crash Jozy. On one level it is pure pornography and yet on another it's an interesting treatise on obsession and/or man's relationship with the technological world. And it tends to polarise readers, either being dismissed as smut or hailed as a work of genius. And I don't think it's necessarily either, but my leanings are towards the latter. I certainly wouldn't just dismiss it as smut, there's more to it than that.

Ballard weaves erotica into a lot of his works. I recently read The Unlimited Dream Company and it was trippy and weird and passionate and violent. Brilliant stuff.

[Rores28]

I think the graphic novel "Lost Girls" by Alan Moore does an excellent job of being both.

It follows the lives of fairy tale characters Alice, Dorothy, and Wendy, and their reflection on the sexual exploitations of their youths while they stay in an Austrian hotel in the wake of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

[JBI]

No, it's not art. I was just showing that words like extradiegetic, positional advantage, and subjective can be applied to many forms of expression. The erotic is just one species of subjectivity, but there are plenty others. There are many, many different subjective modes even within artistic literature. A work like "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" or Book II of the Aeneid are both highly subjective works, but they're not erotic. They're almost antierotic. Browning's and Virgil's poem conjure up feelings of hopelessness, horror, and disgust. These are not particularly erotic. Yet, they are just as subjective as the erotica you describe. So maybe subjectivity isn't the best measurement of the erotic--or, at least, it shouldn't be the only one.

I agree that the erotic is highly subjective (who wouldn't?), but subjectivity is not really the defining characteristic of erotica. To say so would be to mistake a general category for some essential trait. For example, I could say that both chairs and cats have four legs. That's definetly true. They each fall within the general category of four-legged things. But would I really say that "almost all cats have a touch of chair in them," as you said earlier that "almost all art has a touch of the erotic in it"? That sounds kind of silly. Just as there are many differences between things that have four legs, there are huge differences between different modes of artistic, subjective expression. So, while I completely agree that the erotic is subjective ("beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and all that), I don't think you can lump everything subjective together.



This is more specific. A word like carnivalesque implies that there's some natural or socially agreed upon norm that people are consciously deviating from. Is that what you're going for?



I wasn't trying to disqualify it as art. I was just surprised that you would post something so graphic.



If all you're arguing is that the erotic is subjective, then, yes, I think you're being too inclusive. A definition of the erotic has to be way more specific than that. If it wasn't, then I could say to my girlfriends something highly subjective like "Canadian weather is like a dog being washed by another dog," and she would instantly want to have sex with me. Of course, it doesn't work that way. To be erotic I would have to say something more to the point. I couldn't just say some random subjective thing.

You see though, you miss a conception of art - the frustration in identity between other forms as erotic; for instance, aesthetic violence can be attributed as a sort of Gothic-erotic sort of genre to some readers. Medusa, as an image, is hideous, and arguably disgusting, however, she is also an erotic object, and a sexual being.

The frustration between the two forms then suggests to me a more complicated understanding of the erotic connection to aesthetic, particularly to things you claim non-erotic. Just look at the perversion Shakespeare uses in Hamlet - to the destructive Hamlet, the form of book 2 of the Aeneid becomes eroticized, or perverted; the ground of interpretation is bent to fit the violent mood of Hamlet - the violence is done with a touch of aesthetic that is perverted further by its solidification in phenomenal verse that sensationalizes the subject matter. The original is not so cut and dry either - the human mind is rather strange in its cross of emotions, so that grief and violence point toward a sort of perverse desire and fascination. That is probably why much of the erotica genre contains rather brutal, quite physical violence, or domination - it appeals to an erotic conception based on a subjective distortion on the part of audience or author.


As for your final statement about being more to the point - that means you suggest the erotic is in content, rather than in perspective; I would disagree - I don't think it is the subject that matters, but the subjectivity in address of the subject that creates the erotic element - in the sense that the arrangement of inanimate still life objects can create an erotic sensation by suggestion, or an abstract piece of art can contain elements of eroticism even in the most abstract cases.

I think you are just being a bit too prude in your view of art - just are a bit afraid to admit that the physical, sensational, and perverse are commonplace, and quite often the function itself of artwork. The comfort zone you established is just based on your own subjective tastes - a cultural attribute - that does not dispel the erotic nature in perversion that can be found almost everywhere.

It's the same way someone can hear a certain piece of music, like Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, and feel the moments that are quite physically explicit - that are quite erotic, for instance, her dying at the end - and even through orchestration, as seen in the prelude, is an erotic feeling created. I have heard the Opera referred to by one Wagner specialist as one long sexual act, culminating finally in an orgasm with the death of Isolde in the end.

But there is far more - could we not say something like a Mozart piano piece creates erotic elements - the Turkish themes, for instance, associated with depictions of fantastical scenes and near-pornographic (or pornographic) images of Harem maidens and desert-scapes. Or perhaps religious music, like Ave Maria - could that not be said to have erotic elements in the ecstasy created? Is the end of Handel's Messiah not a form of erotic catharsis?


What is the erotic - what is the appeal? I think you try to cheapen the erotic by limiting it, or perhaps deny it, based on a cultural association with erotic as filthy, despite the fact that almost all art is in some way a perverted conception of reality.

[stlukesguild]

Well, given that they are representations of sexualized figures, of course they would have things in common. I never snuck into my father's Playboy issues, but I have read that the magazine has a high couture aspect to its eroticism, something that probably brings it fairly close to aesthetic pleasure--but I still have very little difficulty classifying Lawrence and Nabokov as literary authors, and Sade and Family Madness in another league, which qualifies erotica as a genre able to stand on its own legs.

The aesthetic level of Playboy is probably equal to that of fashion photography. As with fashion photography, it is all of a very high level of craft but largely cliche... with a few exception... as is so of fashion photography. As with fashion photography there are always the exceptional examples that achieve something more.

Obviously, I'm not suggesting that most pornography or erotica... that most Playboy or other pin-ups, porno films, or erotic writing... even de Sade... comes anywhere near to achieving a level worthy of being recognized as "literature" or "fine art". What I am suggesting is that a work of art or writing in which the erotic is the central element... the genre of erotic art and writing... in no way disqualifies the work from the possibility of rising to the level of art. I am also suggesting... with my belief that sex and death... "Eros et Mort"... is a dichotomy central to a vast percentage of all art... that the definition of what qualifies as "erotic" is not limited to gross or banal pornography... while much of the finest works of art in which the erotic is a central element share more in common with the same than many are willing to acknowledge.

[Quark]

for instance, aesthetic violence can be attributed as a sort of Gothic-erotic sort of genre to some readers. Medusa, as an image, is hideous, and arguably disgusting, however, she is also an erotic object, and a sexual being.


It's the same way someone can hear a certain piece of music, like Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, and feel the moments that are quite physically explicit - that are quite erotic, for instance, her dying at the end - and even through orchestration, as seen in the prelude, is an erotic feeling created. I have heard the Opera referred to by one Wagner specialist as one long sexual act, culminating finally in an orgasm with the death of Isolde in the end.

But there is far more - could we not say something like a Mozart piano piece creates erotic elements - the Turkish themes, for instance, associated with depictions of fantastical scenes and near-pornographic (or pornographic) images of Harem maidens and desert-scapes. Or perhaps religious music, like Ave Maria - could that not be said to have erotic elements in the ecstasy created? Is the end of Handel's Messiah not a form of erotic catharsis?


If the upshot of these examples is to prove that art that eroticism doesn't have to be overtly sexual, then this is very convincing. Yeah, you're right. Things that don't seem to have any sexual referent can be erotic. The disgusting can be sexy. Musical notes can be sensuous. What you're arguing, though, is that they always have to be. In fact, you're arguing that everything subjective is, by that very fact, also erotic. It's also erotic in the exact same way (alteration through the subject-object relationship) and to the exact same degree (there's only one degree something can be erotic in this formulation). To say this definition lacks nuance is an understandment. It makes everything erotic to the point where the word "erotic" loses its meaning. You would end up arguing that Ovid's Amores, Browning's "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came," and Pound's "In the Metro" would all be equally erotic and in the same way (the subject perverts its object). You accused me of quite a few things--one of them being that I miss complexity. I think your definition of the erotic suffers from a similar problem.


the definition of what qualifies as "erotic" is not limited to gross or banal pornography

Oh, undoubtedly. Is erotica the same as the erotic, though? Is anything that might be construed somehow as sexy necessarily erotica?

[JBI]

If the upshot of these examples is to prove that art that eroticism doesn't have to be overtly sexual, then this is very convincing. Yeah, you're right. Things that don't seem to have any sexual referent can be erotic. The disgusting can be sexy. Musical notes can be sensuous. What you're arguing, though, is that they always have to be. In fact, you're arguing that everything subjective is, by that very fact, also erotic. It's also erotic in the exact same way (alteration through the subject-object relationship) and to the exact same degree (there's only one degree something can be erotic in this formulation). To say this definition lacks nuance is an understandment. It makes everything erotic to the point where the word "erotic" loses its meaning. You would end up arguing that Ovid's Amores, Browning's "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came," and Pound's "In the Metro" would all be equally erotic and in the same way (the subject perverts its object). You accused me of quite a few things--one of them being that I miss complexity. I think your definition of the erotic suffers from a similar problem.



Oh, undoubtedly. Is erotica the same as the erotic, though? Is anything that might be construed somehow as sexy necessarily erotica?

I think there is the question of terminology though - I don't think the Utamaro print I posted is "erotica" in genre, though by Western standards it is - likewise, are we saying that other genres, such as fantasy, or detective fiction exhibit special characteristics. To me they all seem just like sales gimmicks. As I mentioned before, erotica is a topic - a discussion in itself. The erotic elements are everywhere, but only some genres discuss them explicitly (explicitly within the discourse given by any tradition, so as to make Pietro Aretino a pornographer) - what erotica, as genre fiction does is to try and justify itself based on a niche readership; I Modi perhaps is in the same genre, but nobody reading some sleazy romance, or watching pornographic movies is likely to be digging through renaissance poetry, even if the pictures accompanying it depict what would now only be describable as porn.

What Genre then does, is create an identity to sell to a market; take away that term, and the books then become comparable to other books; so a sleazy set in Ancient China, for instance, must be compared to other books set in Ancient China (many of which, Chinese classics, are erotica in themselves), or so forth; the concept of genre is only supportable to a market that buys it; it's a categorical based on induction, though it is flawed, in that it kicks things out, or deduces too much to limit its own boundaries.

A poem about a fruit, or a flower, or a tree, or a vagina all can be erotica; what publishers do is to say only the one about the vagina can be, as long as it is violent/graphic enough. Does that really make the others any less erotic? What Erotica then depends on is a cultural understanding of readers/viewers/whatever based on what I mentioned before, cultural understandings.

The lines seem very clear in some places - The Middle East, for instance, generally has very strict pornography laws, and laws censoring depictions of physicality, to the point where in some places kissing in public is punishable as being too erotic to be seen by others - or on the other extreme, Japan, where pornographic and hypersexualized motifs and jokes seem apparent even in children's television shows, and pornography is by far the best selling genre of cinema.


Now, if we are to accept an American definition, based on genre writers and porn-photographers and whatnot, then my question is, is the question really about being proper literature or art anymore? I don't think people writing in genre like that are out there to be the next Lanling Xiaoxiao Sheng or D.H. Lawrence. To return to the original question, I would say almost all art is in some way erotic. But I will also question the idea of erotica as a genre, and the notion of literature as a genre; the two aren't mutually exclusive, as my two last examples prove; both great authors (whomever the first is) and both clearly writing very erotic literature, but the whole idea of the genre itself is to cheapen itself, to dumb itself down, and to sell to niche audiences, not to become a masterpiece, and not even to become a bestseller. A book about a man brutally raping and beating a woman will only appeal to a pervert who is into that sort of disgusting fetishization. As with Porn, the question turns to what perversions people will follow - Pornography, as with the case of playboy during some decades, has the ability to be an outlet for feminism, as much as it does to be an outlet for misogyny and objectification of women. Porn has the ability to be both art and smut, as does anything else. The real problem is that smut sells better, as I guess most readers just don't find graphic depictions of sex so interesting, especially written at a 5th grade level.

[Jozanny]

lukes, mon ami, I do not want to get too much off my game today, as it seems, thus far, that I will get some peace and quiet and my ex will be roaming the parks conveniently forgetting that I am in the planning stages of a murder mystery where I kill him and get away with it, as writing it is, if not better, then at least keeps me out of criminal court--where was I?

I do not have many issues with genre classification: Sure, it can be abused, and some marvelous writing defies parameters to the danger of possible neglect, but here is a story that made me loyal to Reflection's Edge (http://reflectionsedge.com/index.php/2009/09/safety/) as a high end genre market, and I will readily admit some slight envy of the courage the contributor put into it.

It is on the softer side, poignant, honest, but to my mind fits the classification of erotica.

What is wrong if I read the piece through that lens?

[Quark]

Now, if we are to accept an American definition, based on genre writers and porn-photographers and whatnot, then my question is, is the question really about being proper literature or art anymore? I don't think people writing in genre like that are out there to be the next Lanling Xiaoxiao Sheng or D.H. Lawrence. To return to the original question, I would say almost all art is in some way erotic. But I will also question the idea of erotica as a genre, and the notion of literature as a genre; the two aren't mutually exclusive, as my two last examples prove; both great authors (whomever the first is) and both clearly writing very erotic literature, but the whole idea of the genre itself is to cheapen itself, to dumb itself down, and to sell to niche audiences, not to become a masterpiece, and not even to become a bestseller. A book about a man brutally raping and beating a woman will only appeal to a pervert who is into that sort of disgusting fetishization.

I actually think that's very well put, and it's a bit of what I was driving at with my question to stlukes: the difference between packaged erotica and the more amorphous (although not ominpresent) presence of the erotic in life and literature. Erotica frequently telegraphs its punches to make it obvious to the audience that what they're reading is supposed to be sexy. I don't think that's the same as "dumb[ing] itself down," but it certainly is something all together in its own category.

Oh, and by the way, did you ever get to reading Leopardi recently? The poetry bookclub kind of dispersed, but I'm always willing to talk about poetry--as opposed to these vague, open-ended topics you see in the general literature part of the forum.

[hellsapoppin]

There are parts of the Bible considered to be highly erotic as well as literature. Ditto for other religious writings.

[JBI]

I actually think that's very well put, and it's a bit of what I was driving at with my question to stlukes: the difference between packaged erotica and the more amorphous (although not ominpresent) presence of the erotic in life and literature. Erotica frequently telegraphs its punches to make it obvious to the audience that what they're reading is supposed to be sexy. I don't think that's the same as "dumb[ing] itself down," but it certainly is something all together in its own category.

Oh, and by the way, did you ever get to reading Leopardi recently? The poetry bookclub kind of dispersed, but I'm always willing to talk about poetry--as opposed to these vague, open-ended topics you see in the general literature part of the forum.

Getting around to it.
Haven't been downtown yet to pick up the translation - will get that probably on Tuesday, though I started reading the thread, and it is interesting what people came up with.


As to the notion of cheapen - I think anybody who predominantly narrows themself into a "genre" and categorizes as such cheapens themself a little bit. That's why many genre writers don't regard themselves as such, or try to distance themselves from such categories - the same way many ironize their own genres, or even their own work.

But, for all of those, there are rather anonymous writers with strange sounding pseudonyms writing "erotica" and selling what I would only call smut. The same way pornography, for instance, can be tasteful, but it usually just conforms power structures of male violence and assertiveness over women/minorities.

Who knows though - it all conforms to a sort of niche - the problem is perhaps better tackled by gender and sexuality specialists than by literary critics - to me erotica as a genre (in its basest forms) should be analyzed and studied by the same people who study condom ads or whatever, not the people who study Wordsworth or whomever.

[Jozanny]

JBI:

I have already admitted that categorization can be abused, and I agree it can be overzealous in terms of marketing, but the sample story I linked to, "Safety" is not just a literary work of short fiction; the author is playing on tropes adults of a certain age grew into: bar culture, fairytales, and she does it in a highly original way even though a reader like myself knows the conventions.

You can argue all you want about the editors calling it fantasy erotica, and you can, (inexplicably) blame the US for driving genre into heavily dependent market interests, but the notion of genre has been around before the US existed; Manzoni wrote an essay complaining about *historical novels* after the publication of I Promessi Sposi, long before the US was a global power, and some writings are necessarily genre dependent. Wilde Woman and Fifth Element would know better than I how that applies to Nin, but it certainly applies to my example without limiting it. It's a good piece of writing, as far as I am concerned, but depends on genre terrain.

[JBI]

JBI:

I have already admitted that categorization can be abused, and I agree it can be overzealous in terms of marketing, but the sample story I linked to, "Safety" is not just a literary work of short fiction; the author is playing on tropes adults of a certain age grew into: bar culture, fairytales, and she does it in a highly original way even though a reader like myself knows the conventions.

You can argue all you want about the editors calling it fantasy erotica, and you can, (inexplicably) blame the US for driving genre into heavily dependent market interests, but the notion of genre has been around before the US existed; Manzoni wrote an essay complaining about *historical novels* after the publication of I Promessi Sposi, long before the US was a global power, and some writings are necessarily genre dependent. Wilde Woman and Fifth Element would know better than I how that applies to Nin, but it certainly applies to my example without limiting it. It's a good piece of writing, as far as I am concerned, but depends on genre terrain.

I wasn't blaming the US - was using the US as a standpoint, since French literature, for instance, seems more frank in the mainstream/literary publications, and Middle Eastern publications on the other hand usually have a tighter control on what is deemed "smut". Culturally the notion of erotica as a genre varies over space significantly.

[Jozanny]

I wasn't blaming the US - was using the US as a standpoint, since French literature, for instance, seems more frank in the mainstream/literary publications, and Middle Eastern publications on the other hand usually have a tighter control on what is deemed "smut". Culturally the notion of erotica as a genre varies over space significantly.

I think your last statement can be agreed upon without much argument, as I did not see your print reproduction as graphic, and some did. I saw it as a print first, maybe because I remember my mother's art school classes-- and she was a good creative artist; I wish she might have stayed with it as maybe her life would have been happier.

But then again, Lolita offends me on a deeper level than something more explicit, like Ballard's Crash, and I don't know if I will ever take the time as a writer to explore why this is the case. I'm not sure, as I'd rather not buy it if it opens certain things that upset me. :rolleyes:

I'll sort that out later, since I just realized I'm turning into a doofus. (Do we have an icon for that?):p