Casanova and Academia

Casanova would not live to see how later generations would discourage the genre of autobiography, seeing it as egotistical. Universities still avoid him like a venereal disease: his memoirs are almost never taught in university classes. In literature departments, the erotic arts are limited to the classes where de Sade, Byron and D.H. Lawrence may receive the full neurotic treatment and moralistic lectures are delivered in sterile auditoriums (but tutorials and office hours might be another matter!). A few academics and historians defend him - Malina Stefanovska and Ian Kelly stand out - but most can't stop themselves from being judgmental - Leo Damrosch.

Michel de Montaigne - writing in the 1580's - would have agreed with Casanova:

What has the sexual act ever done to mankind, what has this natural, necessary, and legitimate act done that men do not dare talk of it if not with shame and exclude it from all serious or pondered discourse? (Essais III, V - "On some lines of Virgil").