Description
Book SynopsisDid an Enlightenment era that dared to make sex an object of discourse also dare to make it an object of pedagogy?
Sex education in eighteenth-century France brings together specialists from a range of disciplines to address these issues.
Trade ReviewThis well-structured book has three sections, each examining contributions to sex education in a different domain. It guides readers through its topic like a pyramid, with a comprehensive foundation followed by an ever more narrow focus in subsequent sections.
-
French ReviewTable of ContentsShane Agin, Introduction: sex education in eighteenth-century France
I. RegulationJean Bloch, Perdition, degeneration or legitimate pleasure? Eighteenth-century French education and the subject of sex
Allan H. Pasco, Miss Manners and fooling around: conduct manuals and sexual mores in eighteenth-century France
Paul Scott, Rites of wrong: confessors’ manuals and sins of the flesh in eighteenth-century France
Kathryn A. Hoffmann, Curing masturbation with a bath, a straitjacket or a wax museum: the strategies of Tissot, Bienville and Bertrand-Rival
II. Reflection and evaluationJean M. Goulemot, Sex education in early modern utopian literature: an investigation into the margins
Matthew Lauzon, Dangerous educations and factitious puberties: the enlightening lessons of foreign love
Shane Agin, The construction and education of the sexualised subject in Rousseau
Cecilia Feilla, Correspondence school for lovers: epistolary exchange and sexual education in Restif de la Bretonne’s
Le Nouvel AbeilardIII. Narratives of education, initiation and discoveryDidier Masseau, Representations of sexual awakening in eighteenth-century memoirs
Chris Roulston, Female education and sex education in Choderlos de Laclos’s
Les Liaisons dangereusesJean-Christophe Abramovici, The comedy of ignorance: scenes of sexual initiation in early modern pornographic literature
Juliette Cherbuliez, The science of seduction: libertinism’s privileged spheres of knowing
James Grantham Turner, Sexual awakening as radical Enlightenment: arousal and ontogeny in Buffon and La Mettrie
Summaries
Bibliography
Index
