All this Francophilia--layered with the Japanese paintings, Indian
erotology, cordon-bleu elitism, precious language, blind racism, and general atmosphere of luxury--reads like a dizzying Nabokov knockoff.
As well as a glut of books on Egyptian theatre and Sudanese literature I have found 19th-century books on agriculture, a French manual of classical
erotology, and a collection of poems about trams.
Not even Ovid, the classical bard and Latin master of
erotology whose "excessive lasciviousness" so many of fray Luis' contemporaries were quick to indict, ever ventured this far in praising the female body.
She places the text in the tradition of Arabic
erotology, even as she places its author within the world of double exile: exile in Spain from his Islamic culture which was stripped from him progressively by the Inquisition, then exile in Tunisia from Spain and the Spanish literary world which he loved.