The Libertine Reader: Eroticism and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century France

by Michel Feher (Editor)

Irresistibly charming or shamelessly deceitful, remarkably persuasive or uselessly verbose, everything one loves to hate--or hates to love--about "French lovers" and their self-styled reputation can be traced to eighteenth-century libertine novels. Obsessed with strategies of seduction, speculating endlessly about the motives and goals of lovers, the idle aristocrats who populate these novels are exclusively preoccupied with their erotic life. Deprived of other battlefields to fulfill their thirst for glory, libertine noblemen seek to conquer the women of their class without falling into the trap of love, while their female prey attempt to enjoy the pleasures of love without sacrificing their honor. Yet, despite the licentious mores of the declining Old Regime, men and women are still expected to pay lip service to an austere code of morals. Since they are constantly asked to denounce their own practices, their erotic war games are governed by a double constraint: whatever they feel or intend, the heroes of libertine literature can neither say what they mean nor mean what they say.

The Libertine Reader includes all the varieties of libertine strategies: from the successful cunning of Mme de T_____ in Vivant Denon's No Tomorrow to the ill-fated genius of Mme de Merteuil in Laclos's Dangerous Liaisons; from the laborious sentimental education of Meilcour in Crebillon fils's The Wayward Head and Heart to the hazardous master plan of the French ambassador in Prevost's The Story of a Modern Greek Woman. The discrepancies between the characters' words and their true intentions--the libertine double entendre--are exposed through the speaking vaginas in Diderot's The Indiscreet Jewels and the wandering soul of Amanzei in Crebillon fils's The Sofa, while the contrasts between natural and civilized--or degenerate--erotics are the subjects of both Diderot's Supplement to Bougainville's Voyage and Laclos's On the Education of Women. Finally, Sade's Florville and Courval shows that destiny itself is on the side of libertinism.

Genres: Fiction, Philosophy, Erotica, Literature, Anthologies, Classics, Sexuality

1324 pages, Hardcover

First published September 22, 1997

About the author

Michel Feher, a Belgian philosopher, is the author of Powerless by Design: The Age of the International Community and the editor of Nongovernmental Politics and Europe at a Crossroads, among other titles. Founder of Cette France-là, a monitoring group on French immigration policy, Feher is also a founding editor of Zone Books.

Reviews

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book contains several 18th-century erotic French novels. You get Denon's No Tomorrow, Dangerous Liaisons (there's a movie!) and On the Education of Women by Laclos, Prevost's The Story of a Modern Greek Woman, Florville and Courval by everyone's favorite perv de Sade, The Wayward Head and Heart and The Sofa by Crebillon fils, and Supplement to Bougainville's Voyage and The Indiscreet Jewels by Diderot.

Indiscreet Jewels is a story about talking vaginas, which alone is worth the price of admission. The Sofa features a man 'cursed' to occupy the sofas in women's bedrooms in invisible spirit form, with predictably scandalous results. Prevost's entry is a psychological novel of obsession a hundred or so years before they were popular. Those are the only ones I've read so far, but they were all surprisingly excellent.

For those who can't stand old-timey prose: these translations are smooth enough so that you won't have a problem. The book's packaging, I must add, is really slick. Publishing types take note.

[Meghan Fidler · Rating 4 out of 5]

One question: if you, dear sir, were offered a ring which made a women's "Jewel" speak, mumble and whine about all of its desires, annoyances, secrets, and observations, would you take it, or run like hell?

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

While there isn't much that is genuinely erotic here (think of de Sade's pedantically explicit though funny/ outrageous sex scenes), this is a fun book to peruse. I purchased it solely for Denis Diderot's Supplement to the Voyage of Bougainville, which was unavailable elsewhere (but can be found here now: http://courses.essex.ac.uk/cs/cs101/B...), but the other selections are quaintly naughty, absurdist and occasionally shocking. This is a great collection that offers a glimpse into the mind of libertine writers. It's also sort of a pre-historical antecedant to the bizarre French Symbolist writers. In an age of jaded excess it seems rather innocent, but what it lacks in eroticism it often makes up in creativity and eloquence.

[Tina Dyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent. Not just "Dangerous Liaisons," which we all knew, but Diderot and Crebillon fils and Prevost as well. How do you juxtapose rationalism with sensualism? The philosophy is all right here. (As well as some provocative story concepts, detailed by other reviewers.)