SOURCE: Milech, Barbara. “‘This Kind’: Pornographic Discourses, Lesbian Bodies and Paul Verlaine's Les Amies.” In Men Writing the Feminine: Literature, Theory, and the Question of Genders, edited by Thaïs E. Morgan, pp. 107-22. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1994.

In the following excerpt, Milech addresses the changing definition of pornography in relation to literature in the nineteenth century.

I

In 1867 Paul Verlaine gathered together into a small book entitled Les Amies (The Women-Friends) six sonnets on the subject of lesbian love. The collection is often discounted as juvenile, derivative, or licentious. A. E. Carter's summation especially emphasizes that last term:

Verlaine's sonnets have a lascivious charm. Like most works of this kind, they are voyeuristic; the spectacle of two sprigs of girlhood in amorous abandon is of high erotic potency. Although the result is pretty enough in an exhibitionistic way, it cannot compare with...