"In this well-researched and ambitious book...Turner's erudition is most often a strength. It allows him to paint a rich and layered picture of the links among erotic knowledge, philosophy, and women's education." --Journal of the History of Sexuality
"Schooling Sex is a magisterial contribution to the study of seventeenth-century libertine literature and its sixteenth-century precursors.... Schooling Sex is clearly a monumental accomplishment, a dense and rich volume whose polemical interpretations of contested texts, trenchant engagements with the work of other critics, and refreshing encounters with lesser-known materials will certainly serve as a catalyst for further inquiry in a range of fields."--Renaissance Quarterly
"A major work that engages with issues of gender and sexuality in fresh and surprising ways is Turner's Schooling Sex&R. The book is beautifully written, with a serious playfulness that suits its subject. His erudite sense of the critical importance of a range of Continental sources for the development of a discourse of English eroticism gives us the fullest account we have of the ways that sex was put into language and rendered meaningful."--Studies in English Literature 1500-1900
"Schooling Sex is an impressive achievement in cultural history and in the recovery of important, but relatively neglected literary texts.... Mr. Turner persuasively situates his underground canon of forbidden texts in the context of educational theory, seventeenth-century philosophical debate, and sexual politics. Part II of Schooling Sex includes sensitive, illuminating commentary on Rochester, Oldham, Wycherley, and Behn in creative interaction with libertine tradition."--Scriberlian
Product Description
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.
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