The Autonomy of Pleasure: Libertines, License, and Sexual Revolution

by James A. Steintrager

What would happen if pleasure were made the organizing principle for social relations and sexual pleasure ruled over all? Radical French libertines experimented clandestinely with this idea during the Enlightenment. In explicit novels, dialogues, poems, and engravings, they wrenched pleasure free from religion and morality, from politics, aesthetics, anatomy, and finally reason itself, and imagined how such a world would be desirable, legitimate,...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0231151586
• ISBN13: 9780231151580
• Release Date: February 2016
• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Length: 408 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 6.1" x 9.1"