Whore dialogues: History and Key Facts

Whore dialogues are a literary genre of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment and a type of erotic fiction. The first example was the Ragionamenti by Pietro Aretino, followed by such works as La Retorica delle Puttane (The Whores' Rhetoric) (1642) by Ferrante Pallavicino; L'École des Filles (The School for Girls) (1655), attributed to Michel Millot and Jean L'Ange and also known as The School of Venus; The Dialogues of Luisa Sigea (c. 1660) by Nicolas Chorier—known also as A Dialogue between a Married Woman and a Maid in various editions. Such works typically concerned the sexual education of a naïve young woman by an experienced older woman and often included elements of philosophising, medical folklore, satire and anti-clericalism. The later works in this genre, such as that by Chorier, indulge in a more sophisticated type of sexual fantasy and are the precursors of the more explicit pornography which followed in Europe.

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