The Secret Museum: Pornography in Modern Culture - Softcover

Walter Kendrick

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

About the Author

Walter Kendrick is Professor of English at Fordham University and author of The Thrill of Fear: 250 Years of Scary Entertainment (1991) among other titles.

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.

Edition details

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