The Secret Museum: Pornography in Modern Culture - Softcover

Kendrick, Walter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520207297 ISBN 13: 9780520207295

Publisher: University of California Press, 1997

Synopsis

Walter Kendrick traces the relatively recent concept of pornography—the word was not coined until the late 18th century—which became a public issue once the printing press gave ordinary people access to the erotica of the Greeks and Romans, the art and literature of the French enlightenment, and the poems of the Earl of Rochester and John Cleland's Fanny Hill. From the secret museums to the pornography trials of Madame Bovary and Lady Chatterly's Lover, to Mapplethorpe, cable TV, and the Internet, Kendrick explores how conceptions of pornography relate to issues of freedom of expression and censorship.

About this title

Review:

"An engaging, readable, and deeply perceptive analysis that details the evolution of the "idea of pornography and its attendant and ever-changing sensibilities over the last two centuries. [It] patiently attempts to supply a cultural context for not only pornography but also the role that sexuality and imagination themselves play in our lives."--Michael Bronski, "Boston Phoenix

From the Back Cover:

Although erotica has always existed, "pornography" is a recent phenomenon: as late as the eighteenth century the word did not exist. From the secret museums to the pornography trials of Madame Bovary and Lady Chatterly's Lover, to Mapplethorpe, cable TV, and the Internet, Walter Kendrick explores how conceptions of pornography relate to issues of freedom of expression and censorship. He provides, too, a fascinating portrait gallery of the jurists, artists, guardians of public morality, sleaze merchants, and civil libertarians who have played roles in the changing definitions of pornography.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0520207297
• ISBN 13: 9780520207295
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336