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Erotic
fiction
Classic
erotica from the Ancient World includes the Song of
Songs from the Old Testament and the Roman Satyricon of
Petronius Arbiter (later made into a film by Fellini).
From the medieval period we have the Decameron (1353) by
the Italian Giovanni Boccaccio (made into a film by
Pasolini) which features tales of lechery by monks and
the seduction of nuns from convents. This book was
banned in many countries. Even five centuries after
publication copies were seized and destroyed by the
authorities in the USA and the UK. For instance between
1954 and 1958 eight orders for destruction of the book
were made by English magistrates.[19]
From the 15th century another classic of Italian erotica
is a series of bawdy folk tales called the Facetiae by
Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini. The Tale of Two
Lovers (Latin: Historia de duobus amantibus) written in
1444 was one of the bestselling books of the fifteenth
century, even before its author, Aeneas Sylvius
Piccolomini, became Pope Pius II. It is one of the
earliest examples of an epistolary novel, full of erotic
imagery. The first printed edition was published by
Ulrich Zel in Cologne between 1467 and 1470.
The 16th century was notable for the Heptameron of
Marguerite de Navarre (1558), inspired by Boccaccio's
Decameron and the notorious I Modi which married erotic
drawings, depicting postures assumed in sexual
intercourse, by Giulio Romano, with obscene sonnets by
Pietro Aretino.
Erotic Literature - Ancient, medieval,
and early modern erotic fiction
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