Schooling Sex Libertine Literature and Erotic Education in Italy, France, and England 1534-1685

Schooling Sex is the first full history of early modern libertine literature and its reception, from Aretino and Tullia d'Aragona in 16th-century Italy to Pepys, Rochester, and Behn in late 17th-century England. James Turner explores the idea of sexual education, from the simple instructional dialogue to the advanced experiments of the philosophical libertine, analyzing the hard-core curriculum that defined sexuality centuries before the Marquis de Sade.

How did Casanova learn the theory of sex? Why did male pornographers write in the characters of women? What happens when philosophers take sexuality seriously and the sex-writers present their outrageous fantasies as an educational, philosophical quest? Schooling Sex is the first full history of early modern libertine literature and its reception, from Aretino and Tullia d'Aragona in 16th century Italy to Pepys, Rochester, and Behn in late 17th century England. James Turner explores the idea of sexual education, from the simple instructional dialogue to the advanced experiments of the philosophical libertine, analysing the hard-core curiculum that defined sexuality centuries before the Marquis de Sade. He shows how close, nuanced readings of neglected but compelling texts - like the searingly explicit Alcibiade fanciullo, L'escole des filles, and Aloisia Sigea - link them to larger issues of gender politics, aesthetics, literary criticism, sexual history, medical science, mind-body philosophy, and the educational revolution.

To come

James Grantham Turner is Professor of English at the University of California at Berkeley. His previous appointments have been Associate and Full Professor at the University of Michigan, Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia and Lecturer at the Universities of Liverpool and Sussex in the UK.