The Whore's Story - Women, Pornography, and the British Novel, 1684-1830 (Hardcover)

A reassertion of the female ingenuity that enabled market-minded English literary fiction and its unfettered alternate to flourish.Providing context via todays struggles over pornography (a term coined only circa 1864), Mudge (Sara Coleridge, 1989) evenhandedly pits Dworkin and MacKinnons ordinances against the bottom line of performance artists such as Lydia Lunch: Reality is an X-rated trip. With bite, he explicates the late-17th-century emergence of a cash-sex-fiction nexusexploiting quack medical manuals, satires and sermons, and licentious verseto unveil how Behns high-flown Love-Letters between a Nobleman and his Sister ripened by 1830 into Spinster Mary Wilsons forthright Whores Catechism. While masquerade entertainments provided rich opportunities for baroque prostitutes, independent women who wrote about passion for money were castigated as soulless fiends depriving the state of maternal benefits, infecting the body politic, and preying upon weak-willed men. Legal eradication failing, Defoes shrewdly conceived Moll Flanders and Roxana affected last-minute rehabilitations. Richardson undertook to reform both novel and reader by celebrating Pamela, whose virtuechastitywas richly rewarded on the marriage market (Fieldings Shamela, on the other hand, laughed). During King George IVs scabrous divorce trial, the prurient press took cunning Queen Carolines side and made a fortune. While government turned justice into entertainment, porn finished emancipating itself from literature: nowadays it is the more artistic pornography that is most likely to be brought to trial. Period prints (showcasing Rowlandson) quicken the argument, and excerpts sate curiosity about most of these backdated textual incendiaries. Only occasional jargon or excess recapitulations impede pleasure. One emerges with views enlarged: if the best things in life ought to be free, who foots the bill for censorship?A scholarly romp that furthers debate on just whose interests are served by suppressing or canonizing sexual representation. (26 b&w figures) (Kirkus Reviews)

Bradford Mudge's book looks at the origins of literary pornography in English, presenting a comprehensive overview of the complex issues surrounding pornography in the eighteenth century, as it appears in fiction, poetry, criticism, medical manuals, and illustrations. Mudge frames these battles in the context of contemporary feminine argument, while closely reading the moment in which the lines of battle were first drawn.

General

Imprint:	Oxford UniversityPress
Country of origin:	United States
Series:	Ideologies of Desire
Release date:	June 2000
First published:	June 2000
Authors:	Bradford K. Mudge (Associate Professor of English)
Dimensions:	243 x 161 x 22mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Hardcover
Pages:	292
ISBN-13:	978-0-19-513505-3
Categories:	Books > Fiction > Genre fiction > Erotic fiction Books > Language & Literature > Literature: history & criticism > Literary studies > 16th to 18th centuries Books > Language & Literature > Literature: history & criticism > Novels, other prose & writers > General Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Gender studies > Women's studies > General Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social issues > Ethical issues & debates > Pornography & obscenity Promotions
LSN:	0-19-513505-9
Barcode:	9780195135053

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