Invention of Pornography, 1500-1800 : Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity

by Lynn Hunt (Ed.)

• ISBN13: 9780942299694
• ISBN10: 0942299698
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1996-08-26
• Publisher: Zone Books

Summary

In America today the debate over the censorship of pornography continues to call into question the values of a modern, democratic culture. The Invention of Pornography, a groundbreaking collection of critical essays, traces the history and uses of pornography in early modern Europe, offering for the first time the historical perspective crucial to understanding current controversies in politics and the arts.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	7	(2)
Introduction: Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity, 1500-1800	9	(40)
Lynn Hunt
Part One Early Political and Cultural Meanings
Humanism, Politics and Pornography in Renaissance Italy	49	(60)
Paula Findlen
The Politics of Pornography: L'Ecole des Filles	109	(16)
Joan DeJean
Sometimes a Scepter is Only a Scepter: Pornography and Politics in Restoration England	125	(32)
Rachel Weil
Part Two Philosophical and Formal Qualities
The Materialist World of Pornography	157	(46)
Margaret C. Jacob
Truth and the Obscene Word in Eighteenth-Century French Pornography	203	(22)
Lucienne Frappier-Mazur
Part Three Eighteenth-Century Vantage Points
The Libertine Whore: Prostitution in French Pornography from Margot to Juliette	225	(28)
Kathryn Norberg
Erotic Fantasy and Male Libertinism in Enlightenment England	253	(30)
Randolph Trumbach
Politics and Pornography in the Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Dutch Republic	283	(18)
Wijnand W. Mijnhardt
Pornography and the French Revolution	301	(40)
Lynn Hunt
Notes	341	(60)
Contributors	401	(2)
Index	403