Essay on paedophilia

The ancient Greeks differentiated between two kinds of attraction: 'philia', which translates as 'friendship', and 'eros', which translates as 'love'. Both concepts gave rise to the two terms that exist, to this day, to designate the attraction (sexual or otherwise) experienced by adult males for children: 1) paedophilia and 2) pederasty. Leaving aside debates about the morality and legality of such practices, the intention of this paper is to shed light on how love for girls has been represented both in Western culture and in its literature. From the muses of the 'dolce stil novo' writers, through the relationship between Charles Dodgson and Alice Liddell, to the girls in the work of Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, the model of "love for girls" is the focus of this research.