Olympia, by Édouard Manet, 1863. Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France.

Eros

Volume II, Number 1 | winter 2009

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The Toilette of Venus (detail), by François Boucher, 1751.

Preamble

Transits of Venus

By Lewis H. Lapham

The commodification of sex and love has shaped our attitudes toward both over the past half century, but eros is more than just dollars and cents.

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The Circle of the Lustful: Francesca Da Rimini, illustration to Dante’s Divine Comedy, by William Blake, 1824–27.

Hell House

By Jeff Sharlet

Young Christians encounter sex, violence, and the eros of evangelicalism in an East Texas hell house.

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Map

The Grand Tour

Sexual hazards from around the world and throughout time.

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c. 1861 | Amherst, MA

Rowing in Eden

Wild nights.More

1856 | Brooklyn

I Dare Not Withdraw

Walt Whitman’s amorous side. More

1869 | Galicia

On Your Knees

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch does what he’s told. More

Charts & Graphs

Getting in the Mood

Aphrodisiac foods in the centuries before Viagra.

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Professor of history Dagmar Herzog.

Black and white photograph of Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud with cigar.

Black and white photograph of American writer and critic Anatole Broyard.

Black and white photograph of C. P. Cavafy wearing thick-rimmed black glasses.

Black and white photograph of French writer and film director Marguerite Duras.

Lord! I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.

—Jonathan Swift, 1738

black and white pencil drawing of Moliere in an ornate frame

Black and white photograph of French novelist, essayist, and playwright Albert Camus.

Molière & Albert Camus

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