Nicolas Chorier


Nicolas Chorier was a French lawyer, writer, and historian. He is known especially for his historical works on Dauphiné, as well as his erotic dialogue called The School of Women, or The Seven Flirtatious Encounters of Aloisia.
He was born at Vienne, in present-day Isère. He practised as a lawyer in Grenoble and then as a prosecutor for King Louis XIV. His works on Dauphiné remain an important source for historians to this day. He died at Grenoble in his eightieth year.

The School of Women

The School of Women first appeared as a work in Latin entitled Aloisiae Sigaeae, Toletanae, Satyra sotadica de arcanis Amoris et Veneris. This manuscript claimed that it was originally written in Spanish by Luisa Sigea de Velasco, an erudite poet and maid of honor at the court of Lisbon and was then translated into Latin by Jean or Johannes Meursius, a humanist professor teaching history in Leiden, Holland since 1610. The attribution to Sigea was a lie and Meursius' involvement was a complete fabrication. The manuscript circulated through the libertine community at the beginning of the eighteenth century and was known in Latin under many different titles. It was translated into French many times, including one translation by Jean Terrasson in 1750, and was also translated into English.
The book is written in the form of a series of dialogues with Tullia, a twenty-six-year-old Italian woman, the wife of Callias, who is charged with the sexual initiation of her young cousin, Ottavia, to whom she declares, "Your mother asked me to reveal to you the most mysterious secrets of the bridal bed and to teach you what you must be with your husband, which your husband will also be, touching these small things which so strongly inflame men's passion. This night, so that I can teach you above all in a freer language, we will sleep together in my bed, which I would like to be able to say will have been the softest of Venus's lace."

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