Libertine novel

The libertine novel was an 18th-century literary genre of which the roots lay in the European but mainly French libertine tradition. The genre effectively ended with the French Revolution. Themes of libertine novels were anti-clericalism, anti-establishment and eroticism.

Authors include Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon (Les Égarements du cœur et de l'esprit, 1736; Le Sopha, conte moral, 1742), Denis Diderot (Les bijoux indiscrets, 1748), Marquis de Sade (L'Histoire de Juliette, 1797-1801), Choderlos de Laclos (Les Liaisons dangereuses, 1782).

Other famous titles are Histoire de Dom Bougre, Portier des Chartreux (1741) and Thérèse Philosophe (1748).

Precursors to the libertine writers were Théophile de Viau (1590-1626) and Charles de Saint-Evremond (1610-1703), who were inspired by Epicurus and the publication of Petronius, and John Wilmot (Sodom, or the Quintessence of Debauchery, 1684). .

Robert Darnton is a cultural historian who has covered this genre extensively.

Further reading

DeJean, Joan (1981). Libertine Strategies: Freedom and the Novel in Seventeenth-Century France. Ohio State University Press. ISBN 9780814203255.
Stam, Robert; Raengo, Alessandra, eds. (2007). A Companion to Literature and Film. Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 347–349. ISBN 9781405177559.
Miletic, Tijana (2008). European Literary Immigration Into the French Language: Readings of Gary, Kristof, Kundera and Semprun. Brill-Rodopi. pp. 196–197. ISBN 9789042024007.

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