Erotic Language

I've been rereading a very hard-to-find collection by my idol, C. S. Lewis, SELECTED LITERARY ESSAYS, which includes a piece called "Four-Letter Words." Lewis was responding to remarks by D. H. Lawrence, who asserted, in connection with LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER, that the twentieth-century had "evolved. . . beyond" earlier ages' attitudes toward "so-called obscene words" (Lawrence's words). Lewis takes issue with the implied claim that the bluntness of language in Lawrence's erotic scenes represented a wholesome return to nature. Lewis examines a wide selection of passages from classical, medieval, and Renaissance literature in which "four-letter words" for sexual subjects appear. He can't find even one instance of such language being used to arouse erotic appetite. Instead, they are always found in contexts of "farce or of vituperation"—bawdy humor or bitter insult. Several writers, in fact, condemn those words as anti-aphrodisiacs that ought to be avoided in sensual writing. "Lawrence's usage," Lewis concludes, "is not to be reckoned a return to nature from some local or recent inhibition"; it is, rather, "artificial."

I tend to land on the side of those authorities who consider formerly "unprintable" words as anti-aphrodisiacs, some of them anyway. Graphic or explicit erotica can mean either of two things—detailed, specific descriptions of body parts and sexual activities or very blunt (some people might say coarse or obscene) language. The two need not coexist. FANNY HILL, my favorite purely erotic novel of all time, goes into copious detail about Fanny's sexual techniques but never once uses a "four-letter word." An author could indulge in any amount of crude language and still keep the bedroom door shut. One of my publishers rates its erotic romances on the basis of both components. A story can't get a rating above what this publisher used to call "Sensual" (the mildest) without including "those words," no matter how graphic and explicit (in my definition of those terms) the action is. Some of the formerly unprintable terms have a decidedly anti-erotic effect on me; in fact, a couple of them strike me as implying contempt or violence rather than passion. Yet other words that I consider fun and spicy are banned by this publisher as too crude. There's no accounting for taste!

From comments by editors and on this publisher's e-mail lists, I know there are quite a few female readers who like and demand explicit language (in the four-letter word sense). I also know from occasional exposure to male-oriented pornography, both print and video, that lots of men like "those words" in sexual contexts; if the audience didn't like it, the producers of the material wouldn't supply it. So Lewis's conclusion that "obscene" words are never used to stimulate desire isn't universally true. The tastes of both writers and readers vary on this point. Do most writers of steamy romance assume that graphic sex scenes must include at least some "graphic" language? And if so, how much? Are there any words that should always be avoided if the writer's aim is to arouse the reader's passion as well as describe the characters' reactions?

Which leads to an unspoken assumption I'd almost overlooked—that part of the writer's aim in creating such scenes is to stimulate certain reactions in the reader. If the writer wants the reader to imaginatively share the characters' anger, fear, love, pain, etc., why not their sexual passion? I'm far from believing that using fiction to arouse sexual appetite is evil in itself. If it's okay for a couple in love to use wine, candles, soft music, lingerie, etc., to enhance desire, why not art and stories as well? (And, for the record, I’m a practicing Christian.)