Non-Fiction

Great Poet of Spain

Spanish novelist and short story writer La regenta La regenta [The Judge’s or Magistrate’s Wife] is the principal novel by Leopoldo Alas (also known as ‘‘Cları´n’’), himself one of the major authors and critics of late-nineteenth-century Spanish prose. Ana Ozores, the regenta of the title, is a desperately bored and sexually frustrated married woman living …

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Early Tunisian Deviances

Eroticism in Tunisian literature—indeed, in Maghrebian literature in general—can be traced back to Mouhammad al-Nafzaˆwıˆ in the fifteenth century, around the time of the Tunisian founder of modern sociology, Ibn Khaldun (b. 1332) and of Chaucer in England. Al-Nafzaˆwıˆ’s work is entitled La Prairie parfume´e ou` s’e´battent les plaisirs [The Perfumed Garden], composed between 1410 …

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Early Algerian Deviances

Different ethnicities, religions, and cultures have shaped Algeria since antiquity. This has deeply influenced the interaction between sexes, and as a consequence, writings about them. According to Rachid Boudjedra, ‘‘there are very strong pagan residues’’ in present-day Algeria. The polemic of eroticism versus religion is nothing new: The Berbers rebelled time after time against what …

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