Category Archives: Eroticism In Literature

I am interested in how eroticism is depicted in different kinds of literature and how social changes have affected tolerance levels for this kind of content through the ages.

Creative Incursions into the Mine of Fictional Desire

In his book Speaking the Unspeakable: A Poetics of Obscenity, Peter Michelson, who like many academics classifies all sexually explicit texts as pornography, identifies three types: hard-core, soft-core and complex pornography (41). Under his schema, hard-core addresses the human fascination with the “myth of animality” inviting the reader to indulge in a fantasy that, freed Continue Reading

The Limits of Bataille

When I chose to start my examination of eroticism with Bataille, I always knew I’d run out of road.  It is hard to to look back, from where we are now, at Bataille’s definition of the unlimited, of excess and not see it as something quaint, laughable. Whether in the ideas he proposed in his Continue Reading

Clean Reader’s Profound Illiteracy: The Consumption of the Text

Three years ago, I was asked to teach a course on pedagogy and the digital world. This was a graduate course, leading to a graduate certificate, part of a masters degree in Tertiary Teaching and Learning. Consequently, my class was wholly made of my peers, fellow university lecturers. The first class discussion I proposed was Continue Reading

Visual Culture and Algorithmic Tyranny: Facebook

Let me first acknowledge that as an online culture, as consumers of digital imagery, few of us limit ourselves to a single platform, like Facebook or Twitter or Tumblr. To use a geographic metaphor, most of us travel widely. But nonetheless, it may be worth acknowledging that for some people, virtual spaces like Facebook are Continue Reading

Trans, Fluid and Genderqueer Erotic Writing: An Invitation

Erotic fiction is the literature of desire. If that is the case, it might seem that writing Trans erotica would present little difficulty. It might be assumed that Transgendered folk would be happy to consume erotic fiction that pertains to their self-identified gender and sexual orientation. But I suspect this is not necessarily the case. Continue Reading

Lacan and Writing the Erotic – Desire

I was asked by my supervisor to explain how using Lacanian psychoanalytical criticism had influenced my creative writing. I suspect the effect has been quite profound, although I am hoping at the same time that it is not too obvious in the prose. Lacan took a number of Freudian concepts and developed them. He was Continue Reading

Writing Compromise: All Writers aren’t Activists.

Erotic fiction authors find themselves in a very interesting place. Traditionally, the writing of fictionalized accounts of explicit sexual human experience has always been problematic, because open and frank discussions of real human sexuality have also been socially problematic. What emerged from those traditional sites of conflict was a push towards a more open and Continue Reading

“Who would want to live when you can watch?”

First, let me say that I enjoy a lot of David Foster Wallace’s ideas more than I enjoy his fiction. I know that statement might be something like blasphemy in literary circles. In truth, he reaches a level of Americanism in his novels that loses me. Something I don’t think he intended to do. I’m Continue Reading

The Fiction of Relationship: The Book and the Course

People have a lot of bad things to say about the internet, and some of them I agree with, but the fact that a course like this is possible, and free – absolutely free – is an amazing aspect of modern, online life. When they run this course again, if this sort of literary examination interests you, I highly recommend you join the course. Continue Reading

The Eroticism of Expulsion

Historically, erotic art (visual and textual) was produced primarily for men, by men.  Yes, there have been exceptions, but the ones that survive are rare. It was only in the 20th century, and mostly in the latter part, that women began to produce erotic fiction aimed at women. This has been portrayed as emancipatory and, Continue Reading