- Title
- Planting for pleasure: the eighteenth-century erotic garden
- Creator
- Taylor, Mark
- Relation
- Interiors Vol. 2, Issue 3, p. 357-370
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.2752/10.2752/204191211X13116005652117
- Publisher
- Bloomsbury
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2011
- Description
- Libertine erotic novellas included a number of descriptions of unfolding spaces that stage the interior as a space designed to excite the nerves and dazzle the senses. One such text is Jean-François de Bastide's La Petite Maison (1789), where the properly encoded interior advertises itself as a space for seduction. For the protagonist the plan of seduction is inscribed in the novel's “floor-plan,” in spatial settings and dimensions between actors and the environment. Although the intention is to arrive at the boudoir, the journey is made through the narrative logics of circulation and exchange, and between house interior and the garden. This article examines the role of the garden as both a moment of respite and an erotically charged enclosure affecting the senses. It includes discussion of other French erotic literature including Vivant Denon's Point de lendermain (1777) and images in which gardens play an explicitly erotic role in the narrative, or construct environments for the pursuit of individual pleasure.
- Subject
- interior design; garden design; design theory; erotic spaces; eighteenth century
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1054916
- Identifier
- uon:15805
- Identifier
- ISSN:2041-9112
- Language
- eng
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