Infamous Commerce: Prostitution in Eighteenth-Century British Literature and Culture - Hardcover

Rosenthal, Laura J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0801444047 ISBN 13: 9780801444043

Publisher: Cornell University Press, 2006

Synopsis

In Infamous Commerce, Laura J. Rosenthal uses literary and historical sources to explore the meaning of prostitution from the Restoration through the eighteenth century, showing how both reformers and libertines constructed the modern meaning of sex work during this period. From Grub Street's lurid "whore biographies" to the period's most acclaimed novels, the prostitute was depicted as facing a choice between abject poverty and some form of sex work.Prostitution, in Rosenthal's view, confronted the core controversies of eighteenth-century capitalism: luxury, desire, global trade, commodification, social mobility, gender identity, imperialism, self-ownership, alienation, and even the nature of work itself. In the context of extensive research into printed accounts of both male and female prostitution―among them sermons, popular prostitute biographies, satire, pornography, brothel guides, reformist writing, and travel narratives―Rosenthal offers in-depth readings of Samuel Richardson's Clarissa and Pamela and the responses to the latter novel (including Eliza Haywood's Anti-Pamela), Bernard Mandeville's defenses of prostitution, Daniel Defoe's Roxana, Henry Fielding's Tom Jones, and travel journals about the voyages of Captain Cook to the South Seas. Throughout, Rosenthal considers representations of the prostitute's own sexuality (desire, revulsion, etc.) to be key parts of the changing meaning of "the oldest profession."

About this title

About the Author

Laura J. Rosenthal is Professor of English at the University of Maryland. She is the author of Playwrights and Plagiarists in Early Modern England: Gender, Authorship, Literary Property and coeditor of Monstrous Dreams of Reason: Body, Self, and Other in the Enlightenment.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0801444047
• ISBN 13: 9780801444043
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288