The Erotic of the Exotic in 18th Century Literature

- Cara Wilson, Dept of French and Italian, Vanderbilt University - April 2016 - Transfixed. Titillated. Representations of feminine beauty and far-off lands fascinated 18th century readers because of their unfamiliarity. Weaving together stories and images of women and foreigners creates a unique reading experience in which the female form becomes exotic and the foreign body is eroticized – a juxtaposition that tantalizes the reader. Cara Wilson, a graduate student in Hanna Roman’s spring 2016 “Rethinking the Enlightenment French Novel” class, discusses how the development of reading for pleasure, and specifically the pleasure derived from reading depictions of the foreign and the exotic, was both a physical and metaphysical experience. - http://gallery.library.vanderbilt.edu/exhibits/show/fr8040/sensuality-and-textuality/erotic-of-the-exotic Follow Vanderbilt on Twitter: https://twitter.com/vanderbiltu, on Instagram: http://instagram.com/vanderbiltu and on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vanderbilt. See all Vanderbilt social media at http://social.vanderbilt.edu.