A Secret History of Pandora's Box

A Secret History of Pandora's Box
GenreErotic fiction
Publishedfor T. Cooper, 1742
Media typeBook
OCLC265032089

A Secret History of Pandora's Box is an English erotic novel published anonymously in 1742 by the London publishers Mary Cooper and her husband.[1] Its focus on the female genitalia proceeds with reference to Greek and Roman mythology, a common trope of the time.[2] Another common and more specific trope in much erotic fiction of the time is allegorizing "the parts of the female sex" as a cave. The trope of Pandora's box was already associated with the female body in the previous decade, in Jonathan Swift's "The Lady's Dressing Room",[3] and A Secret History proposes that the female parts "may well have been the original Pandora's box". The connection is found in subsequent erotic fiction as well.[2]

References

  1. ^ Harvey, Karen (2004). Reading Sex in the Eighteenth Century: Bodies and Gender in English Erotic Culture. Cambridge UP. pp. 42–43. ISBN 9780521822350. Retrieved 26 April 2013.
  2. ^ a b Boucé, Paul-Gabriel (1987). "Chthonic and Pelagic Metaphorization in Eighteenth-Century English Erotica". In Robert P. Maccubin (ed.). 'Tis Nature's Fault: Unauthorized Sexuality During the Enlightenment. Cambridge UP. pp. 209–. ISBN 9780521347686. Retrieved 26 April 2013.
  3. ^ Harvey, Karen (2001). "Gender, Space and Modernity in Eighteenth-Century England: A Place Called Sex". History Workshop Journal. 51 (51): 158–79. doi:10.1093/hwj/2001.51.158. JSTOR 4289725. PMID 18770907.


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