Parkstone Press – Encyclopaedia Erotica

The new millennium offers perfect timing for the publication of a large volume on the history of eroticism. Today, we paradoxically face both new freedoms and increasingly stereotyped language. Political correctness is now the norm and images are raised to the status of icons, especially images of women. The images of goddesses and Holy Virgins have been replaced by images of fashion models whilst Apollo has been demoted to a male model or movie star. Whatever happened to the insolence of the 18th-century libertines or the carefree excesses of the Belle Epoque and legalised brothels? Except for a handful of dusty outdated images, that era is now long gone. This book disregards conventional thinking to present 400 reproductions that illustrate erotic art from Ancient Greece down to the present era in both Europe and Asia. With no inhibition or hesitation, erotic art asserts itself as a key factor of societal development where the quest for pleasure is the sinless attitude of men and women who have determined that reproduction need not be an end in itself.