The Libertine Hardcover by Michel Delon; Marilyn Yalom

Product Details

• Publisher: Abbeville Publishing Group (2013-10-22)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 496 pages
• ISBN-13: 9780789211477
• Item Weight: 3623.13 grams
• Dimensions: 31.75 x 25.15 x 5.0 cm

A delightfully illustrated literary anthology that explores the fantasies, seductions, and intrigues of the eighteenth-century French lover 

This sumptuous volume presents more than eighty selections from eighteenth-century French literature, each concerning some facet of the game of love as practiced by the libertine, or the freethinking aristocratic hedonist, a type that flourished—not least in literature—in the declining years of the Ancien Régime. These pieces, which include fiction, drama, verse, essays, and letters, are the work of some sixty writers, both familiar—such as Voltaire, Rousseau, and, of course, the Marquis de Sade—and lesser-known. Each selection is illustrated by well-chosen period artworks, many rarely seen, by Watteau, Boucher, Fragonard, and numerous others.

Racy, thought-provoking, and a treat for the eyes, The Libertine is the perfect gift for litterateurs, art lovers, roués, and coquettes.

About the Author

Michel Delon, professor of French literature at the Sorbonne, is the author of several studies of the eighteenth-century libertine. He has edited the works of Diderot and Sade for the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, as well as Routledge’s Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment.