2 Anne Rice-Beauty's Punishment(audio book)MP3-zeke23

The Sleeping Beauty Trilogy is a series of three novels written by American author Anne Rice under the pseudonym of A. N. Roquelaure. The trilogy comprises The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, Beauty's Punishment and Beauty's Release, first published individually in 1983, 1984 and 1985 in the United States. They are erotic BDSM novels set in a medieval fantasy world, loosely based on the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty. The novels describe explicit sexual adventures of the female protagonist Beauty and the male characters Alexi, Tristan and Laurent, featuring both maledom and femdom scenarios amid vivid imageries of bisexuality, homosexuality, ephebophilia and pony play. The trilogy was a bestseller, outearning the author's commercially successful first novel Interview with the Vampire.[1]

In 1994, the abridged audio versions of the books were published in cassette form. The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty was read by actress Amy Brenneman. Beauty's Punishment was read by Elizabeth Montgomery, well known for her role in the ABC situation comedy Bewitched, as Beauty and Michael Diamond as Tristan, and Beauty's Release was by Montgomery with actor Christian Keiber reading as Laurent.[2] A compact disc version of the audiobooks was read by Genviere Bevier and Winthrop Eliot.[3][4]

After the success of Interview with the Vampire (1976), Anne Rice wrote two extensively researched historical novels, The Feast of All Saints (1979) and Cry to Heaven (1982). Neither of them gave her the critical acclaim or the commercial success of her first novel; the main complaints about The Feast of All Saints were that it was too heavy and dense to read easily,[5] and most of the reviews for Cry to Heaven were so savagely negative that Rice felt devastated.[6] She had been thinking about a story set during the time of Oscar Wilde for the next novel, but decided to abandon it and go back to the erotic writing she had explored in the 1960s.[7] Her idea was "to create a book where you didn't have to mark the hot pages" and "to take away everything extraneous, as much as could be done in a narrative".[7] To gain a creative freedom for the new work, Rice adopted the nom de plume A.N. Roquelaure from the French word Roquelaure, referring to a cloak worn by men in the 18th-century Europe.[7][8] Rice came out as the author of the trilogy only sometime during the 1990s.[9]

The trilogy was written in the 1980s when many feminists denounced pornography as violation of women's rights, but Rice firmly believed that women should have the freedom to read and write whatever they pleased, and considered the trilogy her political statement.[10]

Beauty's Punishment

The second book starts as Beauty and another naked slave from the castle, Prince Tristan, are sold at auction in the village square. Beauty is purchased by the inn keeper Mistress Lockely while Tristan is bought by Nicholas, the Queen's chronicler. At Lockely's inn Beauty meets the Captain of the Guard, who forces her to pleasure him and then takes her to a drunken orgy with his soldiers. Tristan is bound and harnessed as a pony with a tail plugged in his rear, and made to pull Nicholas' cart while being whipped. When the cart arrives at an orchard, he is ordered to collect apples with his mouth, and trained to "satisfy" other human ponies in the stable. Afterward, Nicholas has Tristan paddled at the Public Turntable, which devastates the prince, and forcibly copulates with him in the bed.

The next day, after having made Tristan march through the crowded streets, which included a short but intense meeting with the Captain of the Guard, Nicholas asks Tristan a series of questions as to what makes a strong, highborn prince obey with such a complete submission. Tristan answers, after some hesitation, that he loves anyone who punishes him no matter how crude or lowly they are and desires the loss of his self amid all the punishments, eventually "becoming" the punishments himself. Nicholas is moved by the answer and, after a frantic intercourse, confesses to him that he is in love with Tristan.

Beauty witnesses the harsh punishment of a runaway slave, Prince Laurent, as he is bound to a wooden cross and the Captain whips him all over his muscular body, and later sees Tristan pulling a cart carrying Laurent in a penitential procession. Tristan begs Nicholas to be allowed to meet Beauty and they reunite in Nicholas' house. Beauty and Tristan copulate as Nicholas watches behind a one-way mirror. Suddenly, Arab soldiers raid the village and several naked slaves, including Beauty, Tristan and Laurent, are kidnapped. The book closes as they are sent across the sea to serve in the palace of the Sultan.

The trilogy was a commercial success, outearning Interview with the Vampire and gaining a significant cult following.[11] Anne Rice was able to secure the publishing contract for her next erotic novel Exit to Eden (1985) with an advance of US$35,000 from Arbor House.[18] There have been allegations that Rice is a dominatrix in real life since the trilogy deals with the BDSM practice so exclusively, but her husband Stan Rice replied that "she's no more sadomasochistic than she's a vampire."[19] The trilogy is read by many among those involved in the BDSM community, but Anne Rice told her biographer that she refused the offer to meet with its practitioners face-to-face, and in fact her brief encounters with "those people" resulted in the discontinuation of the Sleeping Beauty series after the third book, because of moral revulsion she felt when she was confronted with the actuality of the practice.[20][21] However, when the director of the Columbus Metropolitan Library declared the trilogy "hardcore pornography" and removed all print and audiocassette copies from the library shelves in 1996,[22] Rice intervened to object the director's accusations, arguing that the trilogy was "elegantly sensual" and harmless to readers.[22] The trilogy is included in the American Library Association's list of "100 most frequently challenged books" of the 1990s, with the term "challenge" defined in American literature as "an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group".[23]

Professor Linda Badley of Middle Tennessee State University wrote in her 1996 book Writing Horror and the Body on the trilogy that rewriting the myth of Sleeping Beauty as sadomasochistic fantasies enabled Anne Rice to explore "liminal areas of experience that could not be articulated in conventional literature, extant pornography, or politically correct discourse."[24]

Author Anne Rice
Country United States
Language English
Genre Erotic novel
Publisher E. P. Dutton/Plume, New York, NY, U.S.A.
Publication date The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty: 1 March 1983
Beauty's Punishment: 26 March 1984
Beauty's Release: 3 June 1985
Media type Print, audiobook
Pages The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty: 253 pp
ISBN The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty: ISBN 0-452-26656-4 (1983 hardcover and trade paper editions)
Beauty's Punishment: ISBN 0-525-48458-2
Beauty's Release: ISBN 0-452-26663-7