Erotica: Porn or Literature

[Story of O]

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Yes, Luthienne, erotica is interesting. A suggest a Nin book for starters. Delta of Venus or Little Birds, perhaps. You should try Little Birds too, annais.

I, too, am not sure how to distinguish the two. In the bookstores, there are simply classified as Adult Fiction. I would like to take Jenna Jameson's book "How to Make Love Like a Porn Star". It's classified Adult Fiction but that is clearly porn.

[gareb]

there are snippets of erotica in almost all historical romance novels.

[darkwing]

how true....

[gareb]

i believe porn is literature, however blunt and coarse. erotica, however appeals to the imaginative and the sensual.

[Story of O]

Yes, I agree with gareb. Porn is literature. But isn't it that porn appeals to the imaginative and the sensual too? Only I think it encourages an individual to see his or her partner in *** as just a body rather than trying to build a connection based on the other's emotions and desires.

A know a couple of writers who are worried that their prose treads an uncomfortable line between considering erotica and becoming pornography. It is an old charge, that sexually explicit literature is pornographic.

[gareb]

Story of O: with porn, there is almost no room for imagination. it's all served ready for consumption.

[giver_bert]

literature and art is quite a higher title than "written or graphic forms of communication" (implying that erotica is inherently "art" while pornography is merely "communication"), and concerning or intended to arouse sexual desire is a much more scholarly and artistic purpose than intended to excite lascivious feelings... sexual desire can even be construed as spiritually-based longing, or even the study of *** in general, whereas lascivious feelings seems to be a careful euphemism for hard-ons..

[MrBiddle]

this is a debatable subject, my teacher asked for a nude picture with an "artistic pose" and not for porno...

what is the difference between an artistic pose and porno?

Well I have no idea!

[aGoi..]

erotica is idealism as to porn is realism.

[abortretryfail]

hehehe, erotica is the thinking mans' porn...

I like that!

It's similar with photography. Where is the line drawn?

If the photograph depicts the beauty of the human body, emotion, and/or life then I'd call it art. Something that stirs your soul rather than your loins.

Pornography would be in-your-face pictures of people explicitly exposing themselves and/or engaging in malicious *** acts.

Erotica is somewhere in the middle. More than just art but not as graphic as porn.

I'd go with gareb's line of thought.