How the Heptaméron Became Erotica

Abstract:

This article examines a distinct trend in illustrated editions of the Heptaméron, which date back to 1698 but become increasingly common starting in the 1860s. Whereas illustrated Heptamérons from the second half of the nineteenth century tend to foreground displays of passion in the nouvelles and foster a nostalgic vision of France’s medieval past, around the turn of the twentieth century, they go in a direction that specialists of Marguerite might find surprising. The collection could not be considered pornographic or even obscene by today’s standards or those of its time, and if Marguerite foregrounds erotic desire, it is because it is an indelible part of the postlapsarian human condition. However, erotic desire becomes an end in and of itself in illustrated Heptamérons beginning with the fin de siècle. From this point on, the majority of illustrated Heptamérons may be classified as erotica: material designed to provide sexual stimulation but accompanied by more or less lofty artistic ambitions and marketed to wealthy men with bibliophilic inclinations. In other words, there exists alongside the tradition of scholarly editions of the Heptaméron a tradition in which the collection essentially becomes high-class pornography. I will consider what these illustrated editions teach us about erotica in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as about how Marguerite’s magnum opus has been understood and received outside of academia.