ARTICLE: Jeffrey MERRICK, "Sodomy, Suicide, and the Limits of Legal Reform in Eighteenth-Century France" (Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture XLVII (2017), 183-203; OPEN ACCESS

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First paragraph:

Foreign critics who described the French as a frivolous people could have cited two humorous treatments of serious subjects, sodomy and suicide, that provoked laughter in Paris in 1781. According to Le Pot-pourri de Loth, a comical and musical version of the story of Lot in the book of Genesis...

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