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Stronger than the "Kamasutra", "De figvris veneris" or everything we wanted to know about sex in the 19th century without daring to ask.

Stronger than the "Kamasutra", "De figvris veneris" or everything we wanted to know about sex in the 19th century without daring to ask.
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The Libé Books folder
New edition of an astonishing work by a scholar of the time who set himself the task of describing and classifying the erotic postures collected in classical literature.
An engraving by Paul Avril (1849-1928) illustrating the “De figvris veneris”. (Bridgeman Images)

"Rangoni: See how hard I am! But I want to go to happiness by a new road. Tullia: By a new road? No, I attest to it by my own itching. You will not go by a new road. Rangoni: My tongue slipped: by a new posture, I wanted to say. Tullia: And which one? The idea comes to me now: they call it Hector's horse. Lie down on your back..."

Considering that one can be alone, in pairs or in groups, and that the human body is subject to certain limitations – of movement, rotation, elasticity, elongation, musculature (one can hardly scratch one's back with one's heel, nor bend one's elbow backwards) – how many positions are there, standing, lying down, sitting, on one's side, kneeling, etc., for making love or, one might say, possible connections between the mouth, penis, hand, breast, anus, vulva, tongue, foot, nose and other organs of one's choice? The Kamasutra offers 64. Of course, counting is laughable, since arithmetic always yields to imagination. But still: the De figvris veneris cites 90 of them, from "The man leaning forward, receiving between his thighs the woman lying on her back, her legs stretched out", to "Group of five copulators", passing through "Main tierce off

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