Before Pornography explores the relationship between erotic writing, masculinity, and national identity in Renaissance England. Dealing with printed and manuscript texts, drawing on feminist theory and queer studies, it argues that pornography is a historical phenomenon, and although representation of sexual activity may exist in all cultures, pornography does not. It addresses the social significance of eroticism in such canonical texts as Sidney's Defense of Poesy and Spenser's Faerie Queene.

La Cazzaria is the most outspoken erotic text of the Italian Renaissance-a ribald dialogue about politics, sex, and desire. The book is remarkable for its frank discussions of sexuality and explicit homoeroticism-especially when compared to other writings of the period-and for its sophisticated treatment of sexual and political power.

Before Pornography explores the relationship between erotic writing, masculinity, and national identity in Renaissance England. Drawing on both manuscripts and printed texts, and incorporating insights from modern feminist theory and queer studies, the book argues that pornography is a historical phenomenon: while the representation of sexual activity exists in nearly all cultures, pornography does not. The book includes analyses of the social significance of eroticism in such canonical texts as Sidney's Defense of Poesy and Spenser's Faerie Queene.

"La Cazzaria" is the most outspoken erotic text of the Italian Renaissance-a ribald dialogue about politics, sex, and desire written in 1525 by Antonio Vignali, a young Italian nobleman from Siena. Here, in the Rabelaisian depictions of personified genitalia and other bodily organs, a page of our sexual past is restored.
"La Cazzaria" is at once a comic fable about bodies and desire, and an outrageous political allegory. Composed as a dialogue between two actual members of one of the most prestigious literary societies of 16th-century Italy, it is organized as a series of fifty-two questions on subjects ranging from anatomy, to psychology, linguistics, and psychology. The text is remarkable for its frank discussions of sexuality and explicit homoeroticism-especially when compared to other texts of the period-and for its sophisticated treatment of sexual and political power. Written for circulation among a group of educated young men, the dialogue's elitism and misogyny also offers a powerful and often disturbing picture of early modern gender relations.
Outrageous and iconoclastic, La Cazzaria was a risque and provocative text in its day, and remains so today. This first English translation is extensively annotated, and the volume includes a detailed and accessible introduction by Ian Frederick Moulton, author of Before Pornography, which provides a historical and intellectual context for this unfamiliar by fascinating text.
La Cazzaria is at once a stunning literary achievement, and essential reading for anyone interested in the history of sexuality.