Sexuality in Aubrey Beardsleys Story of Venus and...

Sexuality in Aubrey Beardsleys Story of Venus and Tannhà ¤user Aubrey Beardsley wrote The Story of Venus and Tannhà ¤user during the fin de sià ¨cle, the end of the Victorian Era. This decadent work, following Baudelaires credo art for arts sake first of all, portrays sex and sexualities in a playful manner. In addition to mocking conventional Victorian moral codes, and parodying pornographic conventions, The Story of Venus and Tannhà ¤user also supports Foucaults idea that the Victorian Era witnessed a diffusion of sexualities. The Story of Venus and Tannhà ¤user was originally toned down and modified for publication in 1897 in The Savoy, a magazine that Beardsley served as art editor, under the title of Under The Hill. According to†¦show more content†¦Beardsleys readers were not to be of the common society; rather they had to be well-educated sophisticates to understand his work. Another pornographic convention that Beardsley broke was that the characters had personalities and functions in addition to sexual roles says Zatlin (119). Also, they did not have unlimited sexual energy, rather Tannhà ¤user was rather relieved when, an hour later, Priapusa and Doricourt and some others burst drunkenly into the room and claimed Venus for themselves (Beardsley 34). With the diverse accounts of sexualities and the breaking of almost all of the prerequisites for erotic writing and pornography of the Victorian Era, Beardsley wrote a truly decadent manuscript that defied the conventions of mainstream literature. Whether Beardsley would have completed the tale had he lived longer, or had meant to leave it as is, an unending piece of work, is unknown. What is known is that Venus and Tannhà ¤user functions only as a piece of art for arts sake defying the social conventions that were applied to other works of that time. Works Cited Beardsley, Aubrey. The Story of Venus and Tannhà ¤user. Aesthetes and Decadents of the 1890s: An Anthology of British Poetry and Prose. Ed. Karl Beckson. Chicago: Academy, 1981. 9-46. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction. Vol 1. New York: Vintage, 1978. Gillette, Paul