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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23 BC | Rome

Winter Moon

Horace’s ode to an aging woman.More

1595 | Verona

Sweet Sorrow

Romeo and Juliet on the balcony.More

1929 | Kent

To Harold Nicolson

Vita Sackville-West at a loss for words.More

Charts & Graphs

Carnal Knowledge

A global survey of sex.

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American poet Wallace Stevens.

Depiction of Greek lyric poet Sappho.

Black and white photograph of English poet and librarian Philip Larkin.

Love lasteth as long as the money endureth.

—William Caxton, 1476

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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Lapham’sDaily

Roundtable

Lapham’s Quarterly Is on Hiatus

By Lapham’s Quarterly

But the American Agora Foundation is already planning for the future. More

The Colosseum, attributed to Robert Eaton, c. 1855.

DÉjÀ Vu

Monumental Mistakes

2023:

Fitness instructor carves his girlfriend’s name into the Colosseum.

c. 1850:

Thompson of Sunderland makes his mark on Pompey’s pillar.

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Terracotta funerary plaque, Greek, Attic, c. 520 BC.

The World in Time

Robert D. Kaplan

Lewis H. Lapham speaks with the author of The Tragic Mind: Fear, Fate, and the Burden of Power. More

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