Pedophile-romanticizing literature list

Besides "Death in Venice" and "Lolita", are there any great (widely renowned) literary works that romanticize pedophiles? I have heard some people criticize the Western literary tradition as having many such works among its great widely renowned literary fiction, but in order to fairly evaluate this claim I must look for more examples that would be cited

Short answer: yes—there are a number of widely studied/canonical works that critics often cite when arguing the Western canon has romanticized or aesthetically dignified adult–minor desire. Just note that many of these books are contested: some readers see them as critical indictments, others as normalization/romance. Here’s a compact, representative list (leaving out Death in Venice and Lolita as you asked):

• Classical backbone of the canon (man–boy love idealized): Plato’s Symposium (and Phaedrus) present speeches that treat pederastic love—adult men with adolescent boys—as noble/educative; more broadly, Greek literature made such relationships a recurring theme. Histories and reference entries document how pederasty was socially acknowledged and celebrated in elite discourse, which shapes how those texts read today. (HistoryExtra, Oxford Research Encyclopedias)

• Samuel Richardson, Pamela (1740): A hugely influential English novel whose 15-year-old heroine is relentlessly pursued by her wealthy employer and ultimately marries him—a plot long criticized for legitimizing coercion. (Encyclopedia Britannica)

• Choderlos de Laclos, Les Liaisons dangereuses (1782): A foundational Enlightenment novel in which the libertine Valmont seduces Cécile de Volanges, who is about 15 and fresh from the convent—frequently cited as an elegant aestheticization of abuse. (Age noted in standard study guides and reference entries.) (SparkNotes, Encyclopedia Britannica)

• André Gide, The Immoralist (1902): Canonical modernist novel (by a future Nobel laureate) that includes the narrator’s eroticized attention to adolescent boys, often discussed as romanticizing/normalizing his desires amid a self-liberation narrative. (Literary Theory and Criticism)

• Vladimir Nabokov, The Enchanter (written 1939; Eng. trans. 1986): A compact precursor to Lolita told from a pedophile’s viewpoint; critics commonly group it with examples that aestheticize the predator’s subjectivity. (Los Angeles Times, Goodreads)

• Penelope Fitzgerald, The Blue Flower (1995): National Book Critics Circle Award–winning novel about the Romantic poet Novalis’s rapturous attachment to Sophie von Kühn—twelve when he first falls for her—narrated with luminous tenderness that some readers find troubling. (Wikipedia, EBSCO)

• Bernhard Schlink, The Reader (1995): International bestseller and widely taught; it frames the affair of a 36-year-old woman with a 15-year-old boy within a coming-of-age/memory story—often criticized as romantically toned even as it engages postwar guilt. (Wikipedia, Encyclopedia Britannica)

• Gabriel García Márquez, Memories of My Melancholy Whores (2004): A ninety-year-old narrator “falls in love” with a sleeping 14-year-old girl; major reviews describe the book as a rhapsodic “love letter” that many readers see as romanticizing predation. (The New Yorker, Encyclopedia Britannica)

• Alissa Nutting, Tampa (2013): A satirical, deliberately glossy inside-the-predator’s-mind portrait of a 26-year-old teacher grooming a 14-year-old boy; widely reviewed and frequently invoked in this debate. (The Guardian)

• Often cited, but explicitly critical rather than romanticizing: Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa (2020)—about a 15-year-old groomed by her teacher—was marketed and read as a #MeToo-era corrective; serious critics emphasized it is not a romance but an immersion in abuse and complicity. It still appears in these conversations because of how it interrogates the seductive myths. (The Atlantic, The Guardian)

A couple of framing notes

• Terminology matters. Strictly speaking, pedophilia refers to attraction to pre-pubescent children; many literary cases (e.g., classical pederasty or 15–16-year-old “ingénues”) would be labeled hebephilia/ephebophilia today. Critics often use “pedophile” colloquially, but the distinction is part of scholarly debates about these texts. (Oxford Research Encyclopedias)
• Reception is split. Some readers see these works as critiques of predation (or as historically contextual depictions); others argue that the elegance of the prose, the centering of the adult’s feelings, or the narrative “rewards” (e.g., marriage, exalted love) functionally romanticize it.

If you want, I can sort these into buckets—“clearly celebratory,” “ambiguous/contested,” and “explicitly critical”—or add more examples from specific periods (Victorian, modernist, etc.) for a fuller audit.

No need to reorder the list, I will research criticism of each of the works separately later. Continue to use chronological order as that is helpful to trace a historical evolution. Are there any more works besides those?

Yep—here are more often-cited examples (kept strictly chronological, still excluding Death in Venice and Lolita). Brief notes flag why critics bring them up; “romanticize” is debated title-by-title.

• The Letters of Abelard and Héloïse (12th c.) — celebrated love letters between a famous teacher and his much younger pupil; many historians place Héloïse in her mid-teens when the affair began. (Christian History Institute, Encyclopedia Britannica)
• Goethe, Faust Part I (1808) — Faust seduces Gretchen, explicitly said in the text to be “over fourteen.”
• Colette, Claudine at School (1900) — a 15-year-old pupil entangled in erotic intrigues involving adult teachers; often discussed for its teacher–student dynamics. (Wikipedia)
• Jun’ichirō Tanizaki, Naomi (1924) — a 28-year-old narrator grooms a 15-year-old café girl he “rescues” and remakes; the novel knowingly glamorizes the project. (Wikipedia)
• Vladimir Nabokov, Laughter in the Dark (1932) — middle-aged man obsessed with a teenager (Margot is 16–17 in most summaries). (Wikipedia)
• Colette, Gigi (1944) — a teenage girl groomed as a courtesan becomes the adult hero’s love interest; tone is light/comic despite the premise. (Encyclopedia Britannica)
• Dorothy Strachey (as “Olivia”), Olivia (1949) — classic boarding-school novel about a 16-year-old student’s passion for (and the reciprocation of) her teacher. (Wikipedia, Stanford News)
• Yasunari Kawabata, The House of the Sleeping Beauties (1961) — elderly men pay to sleep beside drugged “young virgins” (critical work places them roughly mid-teens to early 20s). (Wikipedia, Nichibun Repository)
• Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) — Aureliano falls for Remedios Moscote when she is nine; he’s made to wait until she menstruates to marry. (LitCharts, CliffsNotes)
• Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow (1973) — sexualized depiction of Bianca, whom the text describes as “11 or 12,” has generated extensive debate. (gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com, pynchonnotes.openlibhums.org)
• Marguerite Duras, The Lover (1984) — an acclaimed autofictional novel about a 15-year-old girl’s affair with a much older man. (Encyclopedia Britannica)
• Mario Vargas Llosa, In Praise of the Stepmother (1988) — erotic novel in which a stepmother is drawn into a sexual relationship with her pre-teen/early-teen stepson. (Wikipedia, The New Yorker)
• Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore (2002) — features a 15-year-old protagonist in sexual encounters with an older woman; reviews and summaries note the controversy. (The New Yorker, Encyclopedia.com)
• André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name (2007) — a 17-year-old and a 24-year-old; celebrated novel/film, frequently discussed in age-of-consent debates. (Encyclopedia Britannica)

If you’d like, I can also split these into “widely read in the Western canon” vs. “non-Western but often cited in the same debates,” or add quick pointers to major critiques for each title.