Body Themed Trivia

1. "Satyricon" dates from the early period of the Roman Empire. Who is believed to have written it?

From Quiz Erotic Literature

Answer: Gaius Petronius

"Satyricon" is a fictional work written in a mixture of prose and poetry. It details the adventures of the narrator, Encolpius and his sixteen year old lover, a boy named Giton. The boy is constantly being enticed away from him by others, despite Encolpius's efforts to keep him faithful. This is a rare surviving example of a Roman novel.

From Quiz Sex Between the Covers

Answer: Lady Chatterley

"Lady Chatterley's Lover" was written in 1928, but it was not published for public distribution until 1959 by the Grove Press.

From Quiz The Body of Literature

Answer: Christy Brown

Christy Brown (1932-1981) was an Irish painter and poet who was born with cerebral palsy. With the support of his mother, he convinced his family and then the world that despite his seemingly devastating handicap, he was an intelligent, sentient being and not a hopeless idiot. He first communicated by learning to control his left foot, allowing him to scribble the letter "A" on the ground, thus proving he understood far more than had been believed. He eventually learned to paint by holding the brush in his toes. This explains the title of his autobiography. Daniel Day-Lewis is the actor who played the part of Christy Brown in the 1989 movie version of "My Left Foot." His father Cecil was Poet Laureate of the UK from 1968-1972.

From Quiz Erotic Literature

Answer: Medieval

"Decamaron", written in 1353, recounts stories of lecherous monks and seduced nuns. Some five centuries after publication it still causes controversy, with eight destruction orders being made by English Magistrates between 1954 and 1958.

From Quiz Sex Between the Covers

Answer: Madame Bovary

One of her lovers, M. Boulanger, is named after the French word for "baker". He seduces her at a country fair over the noise of a woman bidding on a pig. One does not think that Flaubert meant this to be flattering!

From Quiz The Body of Literature

Answer: "The Nose" by Gogol

The others are also famous Russian authors, but Nicolai Vasilievitch Gogol (1809-1852) was the Ukrainian-born writer whose works tended to poke the Russian government bureaucrats of that time. The story in question is bizarre. A mid-level government official awakes one day to discover that his nose has disappeared off of his face. The nose then becomes a central character in the story, taking on a life of its own like a real person. The hapless man then chases it all over town, trying to recapture it and put it back onto his face and thereby restore things to their proper order. He spots the nose getting into a carriage, going to the bank, and performing other mundane tasks in public. This only heightens his anxiety and agitation, as his biggest fear is disgrace and ridicule from his peers for losing it in the first place. "The Nose" was published in 1836.

From Quiz Erotic Literature

Answer: Lady Chatterley's Lover

Originally written in 1928, "Lady Chatterley's Lover" was not published in the United Kingdom until 1960, and the publication caused a scandal, due not only to its explicit nature, but also the use of previously banned four letter words. Publication was a test of the new Obscenity Law, which came into effect in 1959, which allowed publishers to escape conviction if the work was of literary merit. After a trial lasting some three weeks a jury of nine men and three women returned a "not guilty" verdict.

From Quiz Sex Between the Covers

Answer: Moll Flanders

"The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the famous Moll Flanders" was last seen as a tearjerker starring Robin Penn Wright that bore little resemblance to Defoe's work. Mary Stuart became Mary, Queen of Scots. Anne of Green Gables behaved herself. "His Girl Friday" is a movie starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell.

From Quiz The Eyes Have It!

Answer: Ben Jonson

To write "Song: to Celia", Ben Jonson created his own version of a poem that had been circulating through England for some time in various forms; furthermore, the words of the traditional English verse were a paraphrase of some prose statements by the third-century Greek sophist Philostratus. By the eighteenth century, the poem had been set to music by an anonymous composer and become a popular bar song. The opening lines speak of the ability of the eyes by comparing them to mouths and tongues, which people use to make pledges or vows with, perhaps suggesting that the language spoken by our glances is more spiritually binding than that spoken by our tongues. Immediately following these two lines, Jonson leaves off his discussion of eyes to compare the mouth to a cup: "Or leave a kiss but in the cup, / And I'll not look for wine".

From Quiz Erotic Literature

Answer: Fanny Hill

Written by John Cleland while he was in debtors prison this novel epitomises the battle for and against censorship. It was first the subject of a court case in 1749, an expurgated version was published in 1750, and was again the subject of a prosecution, although this was subsequently dropped. In 1821 it was banned for obscenity in the United States, and was not published there again until 1966. In the UK an unexpurgated version appeared in 1963, and, despite the defence arguing that it was bawdy rather than obscene, an obscenity prosecution succeeded. It was finally published without prosecution in 1970.

From Quiz Sex Between the Covers

Answer: Kama Sutra

Animal Farm is a short novel by George Orwell. Sei Shonagon wrote "The Pillow Book". If you answered "Little Women", perhaps you might enjoy a sports quiz.

From Quiz The Body of Literature

Answer: The Man with the Golden Arm

Nelson Algren wrote this heart wrenching tale of misery and woe which befalls a World War II veteran with a drug habit, fighting his demons while trying to readjust to civilian life. Written in 1949, the novel paints a bleak picture of post-war life for the disconnected lower class in urban America, in this case Chicago. The title refers to the talents of the protagonist, Frankie, who is an expert card dealer and an aspiring drummer, and also ironically to how getting the drug into his arm via the needle becomes the sole focus of his life.

From Quiz Sex Between the Covers

Answer: Song of Solomon

The "Song of Solomon" has long been cited as evidence that, at least within marriage, God intended us enjoy the physical aspects of love.

From Quiz The Body of Literature

Answer: The Black Hand

The idea of "the black hand" as a method of extortion practiced by criminals dates back to at least the mid 1800s and the Kingdom of Naples. The term was the result of extortion letters sent to businesses and individuals demanding money. These letters included threatening postscripts such as pictures of bloody daggers, skull and cross bones, and a blacked in hand raised as if in warning. US Law enforcement mentioned the phenomenon in their crime busts, and zealous journalists in early 1900s America ran with the name, which stuck. The secret nationalist military organization in Serbia originally known as "Unification or Death" from this time period also became known as "The Black Hand". Members of the group assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary, triggering World War I. A 19 year old man, Gavrilo Princip, supposedly fired the fatal shots into the Archduke's car, killing him and his wife. Blatchford's book is the true story of Rene Enriquez, an insider in the Mexican Mafia, which exposes this dangerous and far reaching organization.

From Quiz The Eyes Have It!

Answer: Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope published "Essay on Man" in 1734. It was a bold attempt on his part to "vindicate the ways of God to man", to quote a line that pays homage to John Milton's "Paradise Lost", which attempted to "justify the ways of God to men". However, while Milton sought a Christian explanation for the existence of evil in the world, Pope admittedly attempts to offer a more universally inclusive explanation. He attempts to rely on logic and reason to explain the existence of evil. One of the main explanations Pope settles on is man's pride, man's tendency to believe it could do a better job of planning the world than God could. As the quotation in the question indicates, man is constantly complaining about his shortcomings and lack of perfection. However, Pope defends the existence of the Great Chain of Being and argues that there has to be a creature in existence called "man" and that the definition of "man" would be altered if we were created any differently from what we are. We cannot have a greater intelligence, for then we would be angels or God; likewise, we cannot have microscopically powerful eyes, for then we would be flies. In other words, if we humans had any more advantages than what we currently have, then we would no longer be humans, and if there were no humans, then the thread of the universe would come unraveled.

From Quiz Erotic Literature

Answer: Venus in Furs

Written by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch and published in 1870 this book introduced the world to masochism (named after the author) for the first time. The Marquis de Sade wrote on the theme of sado-masochism with books such as "Justine", and a correlation between the two was established around 1910.

From Quiz Sex Between the Covers

Answer: Ovid

Cato the Younger was a notorious prude, Aristophanes was Greek, and Julius Caesar was dead.

From Quiz The Body of Literature

Answer: Eyeless in Gaza

"Lower than bond-slave! Promise was that I Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver; Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him Eyeless in Gaza at the Mill with slaves, Himself in bonds under Philistian yoke." "Samson Agonistes", lines 38-42 (1671) Milton imagines Samson, the Bible figure, agonizing over his horrible end of life purgatory, blinded by Delilah's treachery and forced to toil in the mill for his captors. At the time of writing, Milton himself was blind, trying to make sense of the failure of the English Commonwealth he had supported and the Restoration of the Crown in 1660. An eye disease also left Aldous Huxley partially blind in his teens, causing him to give up a career in medicine and in a sense forcing him on the spiritual journey, arguably a "quest for vision" which is so evident in his novels. "Eyeless in Gaza" describes the education, romance, and social life of a high society fellow who realizes the emptiness of his pursuits, and ultimately turns to mysticism and pacifism to find meaning in life.

From Quiz Erotic Literature

Answer: Song of Songs

"Song of Songs" or "Song of Solomon" is generally believed to have been written by Solomon himself. The main characters are an un-named man and woman, and their relationship is explored from courtship through to consummation.

From Quiz The Body of Literature

Answer: Tom Thumb

Tales of a little person, sometimes said to be no bigger than his father's thumb and who undergoes big adventures, go back in English folklore many centuries. In fact, similar tales of mythical tiny humans exist in most cultures. One of the earliest known English texts containing the legend is from 1621. The presumed author is a London man named Richard Johnson, who ambitiously and informatively titled his work "The History of Tom Thumbe, the Little, for his small stature surnamed, King Arthur's Dwarfe: whose Life and Adventures containe many strange and wonderfull accidents, published for the delight of merry Time-spenders." The character of Tom Thumb has been portrayed in book, film and acted drama repeatedly since then. George S. Stratton was the real life dwarf who lived from 1836-1883. He was a performer in P.T. Barnum's circus where he was widely known by the name of General Tom Thumb and became a famous international celebrity. People of unusually short stature and those afflicted with the disease of dwarfism historically often suffered ridicule and abuse, or were used as curiosities in freak shows, but Tom Thumb was the exception. Barnum, the most renown circus promoter of all time, was a distant relative of the Sherwood family. By all accounts, Tom took to performing naturally, quickly became expert at mime and impersonation, went on the road with the family blessing, and loved the life he was able to live. Of course it helped that Barnum made Tom a wealthy man. He embraced his role in the circus, earning respect and great popularity with crowds in the United States and all over Europe. He had two audiences with Queen Victoria. He grew to a final height of two feet eleven inches. He also married Lavinia Warren, another short person, in 1863. The reception in New York City's metropolitan Hotel featured 10,000 guests!

From Quiz Erotic Literature

Answer: Heptameron

"The Heptameron" is a collection of 72 short stories. Written by Marguerite of Navarre it was meant to contain 100 stories, but when the author died only 72 had been written. It was first published in 1558, using only 67 of the stories, but a year later the full version was published.

From Quiz Sex Between the Covers

Answer: The Story of O

"The Diaries of Anais Nin" were written by Anais Nin. The Kama Sutra was written before France existed. And if there is an x-rated version of "Narnia" ... well, let's just hope there isn't.

From Quiz The Body of Literature

Answer: The Vagina Monologues

The "episodic play" premiered on October 3rd 1996 at the HERE Arts Center in New York City. It was simply the direct, unvarnished experience of different women regarding body image and reproduction, and their sexual experiences as children and adults; and how societal attitudes on these topics had affected and conditioned them. Ensler originally starred in the play, reading all the monologues herself. When she left the play, three celebrities took over. In 2001, Whoopi Goldberg and Melissa Ethridge performed a version of the play at Madison Square Garden, to large crowds. Naturally, owing to the subject matter, the play generated controversy and criticism, from fundamentalist religious groups, but also from some feminists who felt it further sexualized women.

From Quiz Erotic Literature

Answer: Sappho

Sappho was born on the Isle of Lesbos sometime between 630 and 612BC. Her poetic themes are of passion and love and her name is the origin of the word sapphic, which was applied to female homosexuality in the early 19th Century, as was lesbian, which comes from Lesbos.

From Quiz The Body of Literature

Answer: the Cyclops

Polyphemus the Cyclops was the son of the god Poseidon in Greek mythology. In Homer's epic, "The Odyssey", he was one of a race of unruly giants who tended sheep on an island. Ship captain Odysseus and his crew get trapped in the giant's cave and are being eaten two per day until they turn the tables by putting out the giant's eye with a burning stake after he falls asleep. Then they escape by clinging to the bottom of his sheep as the sheep exit the cave for their daily grazing, while Polyphemus vainly feels for them in his blind rage. This is only one of many adventures endured by Odysseus and his men on their journey home from the Trojan War, according to this famous account. It is one of the most often-read and studied examples of literature surviving from ancient Greece. "The Odyssey" is generally considered as a work of fiction, describing legendary events and figures, although some scholars maintain it is based on real, historic events.

From Quiz Erotic Literature

Answer: Xaviera Hollander

Xaviera Hollander is a former call girl and madam. Born in 1943 she spent the first two years of her life in a Japanese internment camp. In the early 1960's she made her way to America via South Africa, and in 1968 she quit her job as a Secretary to become a call girl making $1000 a night. A year later she opened her own establishment called "The Vertical Whorehouse", and became New York's best known madam. In 1971 she wrote "The Happy Hooker" considered a landmark book of the time because of its very positive attitude to sex.

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