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LoveReading is thrilled to announce the launch of The Very Short Story Award 2019! If you think you have a story we'll love, click here to find out more and how to enter:
Find out more
LoveReading is thrilled to announce the launch of The Very Short Story Award 2019! If you think you have a story we'll love, click here to find out more and how to enter:
Find out moreIt could be said that we are in a Golden Age for Provocative fiction. With more and more authors releasing books that explore the various realms of sexuality while still offering social commentary and a concentrated examination of human feelings and attitudes throughout. So with that in mind, why not test your fictional limits and see the range of provocative prose we have on offer!
John Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure has been described as the first erotic novel in English and is perhaps the greatest example of the genre. From the outset it was mired in disrepute. Cleland penned the novel to liberate himself from debtors' prison, and the book's manifestly lewd content led to its legal suppression within a year of publication. Though versions of the novel, nearly always abridged in some form, continued to find a way into print, the Memoirs remained an underground text until the 1960s. Only as that decade ushered in a culture less socially deferential and more sexually permissive was the moment opportune for the obscenity ban to be successfully challenged. Cleland's novel is a triumph of literary style, resting on his invention of an entirely new, vividly metaphoric, terminology for describing sexual pleasure.
50 Shades of Great
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Literature has addressed sex throughout history. The joys and complexities are shown in 'The Song of Solomon' in the Bible. Byron, Chacer and Donne are famous for their compemplations on sex and desire.
Provocative prose is not simply pornographic, and product created simply to excite and arouse. Provocative prose stands apart as it is able to offer excitement while also deliviering social commentary and an examination of human feelings and behaviour. This genre can help you to think more deeply about sex, desire and how are attitudes to this topic are formed and what impact they have.
One of the most famous literary erotica would be Lady Chatterly's Lover by D.H. Lawrence, which manages to combine titilation and provocation while also offering character development, and an examination of the theme.
While some will still find these books shocking and a step too far. However there are marvelous modern authors such as Henry Miller, Anais Nin, and Annie Rice with her 'Sleeping Beauty' series which was published under the name Anne Roquelaure. With the development and exploration of this genre, there is a wide and varied selection of books for those interested in indulging.