French Literature Reviews - 2026
A. D. Leiva, Messalina: Empress and Whore. The Genealogy of a Sexual Myth
History, Politics and Society
Antonio Domínguez Leiva
Messalina: Empress and Whore. The Genealogy of a Sexual Myth,
Murmure, collection "U-Limit", 2020.
EAN13 : 9782915099812.
Despite the legendary brilliance of her name, Messalina remains a largely unknown figure whom everyone thinks they know. Yet the discreet yet fascinating traces left by the empress invite us on a truly extraordinary journey. As the personification of vice, lust, and the female gender, Messalina gradually evolved into one of the Western world's premier erotic myths, ultimately embodying the most sulfurous of femmes fatales.
A living fusion of femininity and sexuality, as well as of Eros and Thanatos, Messalina occupies a privileged—even if frequently obscured and subterranean—place in the Western imagination, by which it is simultaneously repelled and captivated. A marginal figure herself, she has haunted the fringes of "low genres," fueling a poetics of bad taste (ranging from kitsch to the obscene, via vulgar comedy), as well as powerful works on the margins of the canon that are obsessed with her enchanting presence (Sade, Jarry, Casanova, Graves, etc.). Thus, she reigns over vast swathes of our cultural imagination, from baroque operas to fin-de-siècle archaeological novels, from sexological manuals to the most pulp-driven nympho-novels, from historiography to the peplum soft-core/pornographic films of the sexual revolution.
Tracing through her scandalous presence a trail of lewdness stretching from Antiquity to our paradoxical hypermodernity, she links—often in surprising ways—the undercurrents of the classical tradition, which has never truly left us, and, more importantly perhaps, she outlines the hidden history of the repression of female desire and, by extension, of femininity itself.
Hence her unexpected triumph in our post-disciplinary societies, which believe they have done away with her yet remain utterly fascinated by the unbridled splendor of her distant heirs: the neo-nymphos who, from pop music to hard-core porn, traverse the mass culture of the Global Village. In this paradoxical disappearance, which reads as an unmatched triumph—liberated from the damnatio memoriae that for two thousand years cast her image in opprobrium—will Messalina finally find happiness?
Contents
- THE RESISTIBLE RISE OF MESSALINA
- Sed non satiata, at the Origins of the Myth
- Eclipse and Renaissance of Messalina
- The Messalinian Baroque
- THE DECADENT "MESSALINITAS"
- To the Tune of Messalina
- The Messalinian Historical Novel
- On Stage, on Gallery Walls, and in Verse
- FROM THE BELLE ÉPOQUE TO THE PEPLUM
- Disaffection and Survivals of the Myth
- On the Verge of the Messalinian Peplum (1925–1935)
- The Golden Age of the Messalinian Peplum (1951–1964)
This scholarly study investigates the cultural afterlife of Valeria Messalina, tracing her transformation from a historical Roman empress into a potent archetype of female vice and unbridled sexuality in the Western imagination. Antonio Domínguez Leiva examines how her legendary persona permeated diverse artistic domains, from baroque opera and decadent literature to fin-de-siècle novels and the peplum cinema of the twentieth century. By mapping these subterranean currents, the volume sheds light on the persistence of classical tropes in popular culture and elite traditions alike, offering a rigorous examination of how marginal genres engaged with enduring taboos.
The book will interest scholars and readers of cultural history, literary reception, and gender studies who seek to understand the mechanisms behind enduring historical myths. By analyzing the works of writers such as Sade, Jarry, and Casanova alongside lesser-known pulp texts, the study provides valuable insights into the repression and representation of female desire across centuries. It serves as a compelling resource for those exploring the intersections of historiography, mythology, and the aesthetics of transgression within the broader framework of Western cultural traditions.