When we talk about sexuality, this does not only include the human organism or sexual differences. Rather, we are referring to interpretations and opinions that grew historically, were subject to historical change and are controlled and monitored by us and others in the present.
This steering of sexuality in the 'right' direction took many forms in the early modern period: If, for example, a comparatively open and permissive exchange with the subject can be traced for the 16th century (whereby prostitution, incest, adultery and the like were subject to strict penalties), the second half of the 18th century saw a move towards criminalising merely the advertising of lewd writings. Nonetheless, medical practitioners, educationalists and theologians, with the intention of educating their fellow human beings and achieving moral improvement through enlightenment, attempted to cover the legitimate and forbidden, natural and unnatural, healthy and morbid manifestations of sexuality as comprehensively as possible in numerous articles; however, erotic appeal was often ((un)knowingly) developed through anatomical illustrations or descriptions.
In view of the great risk of inciting the readership to immoral behaviour by describing certain sexual practices instead of discouraging them, and thus damaging their own reputation, many authors warned right at the beginning of the terrible consequences that imitations would entail, and encouraged a sober discussion of the respective topic, "without trespassing [...] against the Rules of Decency, and making use of Words and and Expressions which Modesty forbids us to utter". The seminar will use encyclopaedias, legal texts, medical books and autobiographical texts to examine what knowledge, ideas, desires, orientations and fantasies were interwoven with the term "sexuality", how exactly one moved along the fine line of naming and concealing incest, sodomy, adultery, etc., and how sexuality was lived in practice in the 17th and 18th centuries.