Sextravaganza

Sextravaganza shows Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crebillon fils at his ablest. It begins where most novels end – in the bedroom (of a fashionable lady of 18th Century France). At night. And it ends there the following morning. Its dramatis personae are two – as in the Garden of Eden. A man and a woman. The difference is that French women need no snake to tempt them. And Frenchmen no apple. Men and women had traveled far since the days of Adam and Eve. Sextravaganza is as simple, and as risque, as all that. But around this simple setting what a masterpiece of the subtle and the sophisticated does Crebillon paint! It is a most extraordinary picture of the battle between the sexes. On one side the male strategy of attack: the aphrodisiac quality of erotic conversation, the incandescent power of casual caresses, the psychological moments of action. On the other side the female tactics of defense: the evasive changes of subject, the reprimands of mock indignation, the agitations of approaching defeat. Finally, the tumultuous surrender . Thus, in the course of one night, a man and a woman, each of whom is in love with somebody else, gradually warm up to each other until they forget past pleasures in present passions .. Satire, irony, word-play and scandal abound.