Abstract
Abstract The illustrated review Don Juan published an eclectic array of literary and artistic works, ranging from the popular to the avant-garde. By exploiting sex appeal, shared humour, and textual structures, the review created forms of erotic complicity between text, collaborator, and reader. This article suggests that Don Juan enacted a form of proxénétisme by encouraging, enabling, and profiting from erotic relations within and beyond its pages. The review’s advertising columns regularly featured products such as sex toys, condoms, and aphrodisiacs, which, in enabling non-procreative and pleasure-centred sexual liaisons, brought obscenity trials against the businesses that sold them. Much like the sex shop Maison A. Claverie, the revue légère crossed moral and legal boundaries by offering sexual pleasure to a diverse clientele. Through its playful manipulation of a wide variety of advertising formats, such as personal ads, book catalogues, and réclame, Don Juan provided space for creative forms of erotic textual production, frequently blurring generic and structural boundaries between advertising and main copy, pecuniary interest and artistic expression.
Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
