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- Title
THE FEMALE PHILOSOPHE IN THE CLOSET: The Cabinet and the Senses in French Erotic Novels, 1740-1800.
- Authors
BROWN, DIANE BERRETT
- Abstract
Many eighteenth-century erotic texts recount the coming of age of a young female narrator, an event that eventually motivates the capacity for philosophical reasoning. Sexual enlightenment in these texts tends to be triggered by a voyeuristic scene in which the narrator, hidden in a cabinet or behind a curtain, observes erotic activity. Using Thérèse philosophe (1748) as a model, this essay presents voyeurism as an extension of sensationist philosophy that offers literary embodiment to the "statue man" theories of Condillac and other French sensationists. The intricately described cabinet is shown to be a privileged site for both seduction and observation and, ultimately, for the making of pornography's female philosophe.
- Subjects
CRITICISM; THERESE Philosophe (Book); FRENCH erotic literature; VOYEURISM in literature; WOMEN'S sexual behavior; HISTORY; FRENCH literature; LITERARY criticism; EARLY Modern Period (Literary period)
- Publication
Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, 2009, Vol 9, Issue 2, p96
- ISSN
1531-0485
- Publication type
Literary Criticism
- DOI
10.1353/jem.0.0035