Overview

"In America today the intense and controversial debate over the censorship of pornography continues to call into question the values of a modern, democratic culture. This collection of ten critical essays traces the history and various uses of pornography in early modern Europe, offering the historical perspective crucial to understanding current issues of artistic censorship. The essays, by historians and literary theorists, examine how pornography emerged between 1500 and 1800 as a literary practice and a category of knowledge intimately linked to the formative moments of Western modernity and the democratization of culture. They reveal that the first modern writers and engravers of pornography were part of the ""demi-monde"" of heretics, freethinkers and libertines who constituted the dark underside of the Renaissance, the scientific revolution, the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. From the beginning, early modern European pornography used the shock of sex to test the boundaries and regulation of decent and obscene behaviour and expression in the public and private spheres, criticizing and even subverting religious and political authorities as well as social and sexual norms."

Full Product Details

Author:   Lynn Hunt
Publisher:   Zone Books
Imprint:   Zone Books
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.90cm , Length: 22.50cm
Weight:   0.735kg
ISBN:  

9780942299687

ISBN 10:   094229968
Pages:   412
Publication Date:   01 June 1993
Recommended Age:   From 18 years
Audience:   General/trade ,  College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  General ,  Undergraduate
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Out of Print
Availability:   Out of stock  

Table of Contents

"Introduction, Lynn Hunt; humanism, politics, and pornography in Renaissance Italy, Paula Findlen; the politics of pornography - ""L'ecole des Filles"", Joan DeJean; sometimes a sceptre is only a sceptre - pornography and politics in Restoration England, Rachel Weil; the materialist world of pornography, Margaret C. Jacob; truth and the obscene word in 18th-century French pornography, Lucienne Frappier-Mazur; the pornographic whore - prostitution in French pornography from Margot to Juliette, Kathryn Norberg; erotic fantasy and the libertine dispensation in 18th-century England, Randolph Trumbach; politics and pornography in the 17th- and 18th-century Dutch Republic, Wijnand W. Mijnhardt; pornography and the French Revolution, Lynn Hunt."

Reviews

Fascinating...a fiercely intelligent and provocative collection thatprovides new insights into both the origins of modern pornographyand the dynamics of cultural modernity. Michiko Kakutani , New York Times

Fascinating...a fiercely intelligent and provocative collection that provides new insights into both the origins of modern pornography and the dynamics of cultural modernity. -- Michiko Kakutani New York Times

Author Information

Lynn Hunt is the editor of The New Cultural History and the author of The Family Romance of the French Revolution.

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