{"product_id":"9780942299694","title":"The Invention of Pornography, 1500--1800: Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn 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 ground-breaking 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe 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 \u003ci\u003edemimonde\u003c\/i\u003e 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 behavior and expression in the public and private spheres, criticizing and even subverting religious and political authorities as well social and sexual norms.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eContents:\u003c\/b\u003e Introduction, \u003ci\u003eLynn Hunt\u003c\/i\u003e. Humanism, Politics, and Pornography in Renaissance Italy,\u003ci\u003ePaula Findlen\u003c\/i\u003e. The Politics of Pornography: L'Ecole des filles,\u003ci\u003eJoan Dejean\u003c\/i\u003e. Sometimes a Sceptre is only a Sceptre: Pornography and Politics in Restoration England, \u003ci\u003eRachel Weil\u003c\/i\u003e. The Materialist World of Pornography, \u003ci\u003eMargaret C. Jacob\u003c\/i\u003e. Truth and the Obscene Word in Eighteenth-Century French Pornography, \u003ci\u003eLucienne Frappier-Mazur\u003c\/i\u003e. The Pornographic Whore: Prostitution in French Pornography from Margot to Juliette, \u003ci\u003eKathryn Norberg\u003c\/i\u003e. Erotic Fantasy and the Libertine Dispensation in Eighteenth-Century England, \u003ci\u003eRandolph Trumbach\u003c\/i\u003e. Politics and Pornography in the Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Dutch Republic, \u003ci\u003eWijnand W. Mijnhardt\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e Pornography and the French Revolution, \u003ci\u003eLynn Hunt\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Zone Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47034479739120,"sku":"9780942299694","price":26.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780942299694_p0.jpg?v=1763873927","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780942299694","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}