Lecture 5/Term 2
The Invention of Pornography: Exploring the Sexual Self in the
Eighteenth Century
What is pornography?
The word derive from the Greek ‘pornographia’ and means ‘a
written description or illustration of prostitutes or prostitution.’
Clearly, however, that is too destrictive for our use here. I think quite
useful is a definition by Peter Wagner:
‘the written or visual presentation in a realistic form of any genital
or sexual behaviour with a deliberate violation of existing and widely
accepted moral and social taboos.’
Now, sounds very neat and workable but only because it does not go
into these moral and social taboos. Because then it gets really hairy:
We all know that what is for one person pornography is for another
sex education. Margart thatcher, for example, the women with the
famous handbag that terrorised ministers all over the world, did not
allow the word ‘sex’ to be pronounced in any of her cabinet meetings.
Her ministers had to find a different worked. She considered its
mentioning as ‘pornographic’. This created rather difficult sessions
as we know from eye witnesses: we have to remember that it was
during her reign we had the new mysterious disease Aids appearing
which killed thousands of homosexual men in particular. Sex was
very central here to discuss. Her total phobia everything related to
sex – if it was not for pro-creation – it was considered porn and
homosexual acts, made these discussion about Aids very difficult.
As Hunt explains in her introduction, the term ‘pornography’ only
comes into use during the 19th century. The word first appeared in
the Oxford English Dictionary in 1857 and most of the English
variations state from the middle or end of the 19th century. In French
it emerges a little bit earlier. 1769 it refered to writing about
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prostitution – so the original Greek sense --, in the sense of obscene
writings or images date from the 1830 or 1840. (Hunt, 13). The first
secret library collections – so erotic literature as a separate collection
in the collections of national libraries—date from the same time.
1836 the ‘Collection de l’Enfer’ at the Bibliotheque nationale; British
library it was called ‘Private Case’. And until only very recently you
needed a special permission to see such works.
Pornography is a problematic term if we look for it before the 19th
century. We have to use the actors categories such as : obscene,
lascivious, lustful
I will use the modern term however for such works; I just want you
to be aware of its problematic.
So, how does this category of ‘bad’ books or pornographic books
emerge?
We have to go back a bit further than the 18th century:
Not to greeks because we are interested in books here….
The effects of a widening book market and prohibition:
It is of course related first of all to an emerging book market, and
there it is linked to the print revolution of the 1500 century – I talked
about it in the early modern world lecture a couple of weeks ago. The
printing press made the printed word widely available but not only
the printed word. Also the printed image – and that is of course
central to rise of the obscene.
You need an audience for such works, you need a reading public, you
need to develop a different form of reading. You remember that I
have said that reading up to the print revolution was often done in
public because so few people could read. Pornography is not really
made to be read aloud – particularly not in a religious society as in
the 15th and 16th century. So what you need for this genre to florish is
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a wide audience – who want to buy, read and look at it -- and an
audience which considers it normal to read in private. Readings
needs to be a private enterprise.
We have seen already that the rise of printed material and its
circulation in wider culture – beyond the class of the educated elite -was from the beginning considered by authorities, religious and
politicial, as dangerous. And early on, mechanisms of censorship
were established that defined the boundary between licit and illicit.
While the Index of Forbidden Books, most comprehensively
established by the pope Paul IV in 1559, was primarily designed to
excise from the Catholic world heretical works and the writings of
Protestants, it tangentially addressed the moral content of art and
literature. More fully expressed is the official Catholic view in the
Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent (1563).
(slide)
By 1558 we also fine what literary scholars have called the first work
of pornography on the index. The famous Ragionamenti by Pietro
Arentino (1492-1556).
(slide)
Arentino was famous and perhaps even more infamous at his own
time, and one of the first author who could make a living from his
pen. His work remained on the Index throughout the early modern
period. Under pressure from the Church authorities, civic
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governments in increasingly allowed ecclesiastical officals to inspect
bookstores. When probited books were discovered, their were
confiscated and eventually burned. Venice was notorious for all such
things ‘lascivious or obscene’.
This led to a new social practices of those who sold such books but
also those to wanted to read them. There developed an international
market of them and everybody was aware of the inquisition.
So, what we see here is that rather than eradicating this sort of
literature, the efforts of the Inquisition and the Index - and the same
of true of all the indexes of forbidden books by civic authorities until
the earlry 19th century—gave it a special status by making it difficult
to acquire. And that was a great part of the attraction.
Images and inquisition:
The same was true for images; originally the Church did not include
them in the prohibition but that changed very quickly. By the 1580
Church officials took upon them to inspect content of paintings and
sculptures and to pass judgmeent upon the appropriateness of the
modes of portrayal or chosen by artists. Pagan imagery and nudity,
except where Holy Writ dictated, was systematically censured, the
nudes in Michelangeo’s Last Judgement -- which Arentino found
more obscene than his own writings – were gradually garbed with
wisp of fabric, and a programm of sanitised icnonogrpahy ws
encouraged, if never successfully implemented.
(slide) still covered church decided not to restore to original
But the same here in the end; these restrictions and of course in
Protestant countries there were much more severe – created a
thriving market. Bookseller got around the prohibitions; Arentinos
postures for example – Marcantonio Raimondi’s engravings of
sixteen sexual positions, originally conceived by Guilio Romano and
later accompanied by Aretino’s sonnets were for example published
in London.
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(slide of the postures)
So, it is in this widening circuit of popular printed works – the
printed word and the printed image – that we have to see these
beginnings of a pornographic culture in the West.
However, something else needed to happen in order to make
pornography thrive. I mentioned that in the lecture. What is needed
is a culture of private readings. Reading was done often aloud, most
people couldn’t read. Pornography is not really for reading aloud; it
requires a culture of privacy.
And we know that these things were read in private. Particularly the
historian Robert Darnton has worked on the practices of readings
such works in France. And we have an English example too, for
example from the famous 17th century diary of Samuel Peyps diary,
bought a work of pornography, in fact the first French example or
pornography, L’ecole des filles, ‘the first specimen of a deliberate
obscene book written in French.
(slide)
February 8, 1668:
Thence away to the Strand to my bookseller’s, and there stayed an
hour and bought that idle, roguish book, L’escholle des Filles; which I
have bought in plain binding (avoiding the buying of it better bound)
because I resolve, as soon as have read it, to burn it, that it may not
stand in the list of books, nor among them, to disgrace them if it
should be found.’
A few days later he reports back in a kind of code language his
masturbation while reading the book.
(slides)
February 9, 1668: Lord's Day. Up, and at my chamber all the morning
and in the office, doing business and also reading a little of L'escholle des
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Filles, which is a mighty lewd book, but yet not amiss for a sober man
once to read over to inform himself in the villainy of the world....[later
that afternoon] I to my chamber, where I did read through L'escholle de
Filles a lewd book, but what doth me no wrong to read for information
sake but it did hazer my prick para stand all the while, and una vez to
decharge; and after I had done [the book], I burned it, that it might not be
among my books to my shame’.
Afterwards he burned it as promised, had supper with his wife and
went to bed – choosing not to bother his wife that night.
These things were meant for reading in private or because they
visibly did something to your body, and not only to male bodies.
Looking at such images or reading a page of the l’ecole de fille
aroused your body. It quickened you blood, awakened the passions.
That might be beneficial for the reader – as in the case of Peyps
although he felt very guilty afterwards and was particularly nice to
his wife to calm his conscions. But it could get out of control.
The emergence of the pornographic novel:
The effects of reading in private – and not only of pornography but all
kinds of printed material -- occupied 17th and 18th century
contemporaries a lot.
This has to do on one hand with an ever-widening readings public in
the late 17th and 18th century, more people could read and there was
more to read. We get libraries now where people can borrow books.
Also, we now have women as reader as literacy now included them.
We talked about the saloniere, these educalted women who were at
the centre of a reading and discussing public, a public which the
sexes met more frequently than before. The sphere of men and
women crossed more often, despite the development of a private and
public sphere, according to. Historians have talked about a reading
revolution.
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(salon picture to see men and women crossing; people readings)
There are also new genres of writing coming out and I want to talk
about on e in particular here because it is central to a particular form
of pornographic writing, and is the novel. The rise of pornographicl
writing in out modern sense of the world cannot be explained
without the rise of the novel in the early 18th century.
So, what is the novel?
(slide)
The present English word, “Novel”, derives from the Italian novella for
"new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the Latin
novella.
In contrast with lengthy heroic romances which narrated in an exalted
poetic languagethe fatal deeds of aristocratic heroes fighting for ‘the big
cause’ in faraway historical settings, the novels – in short – represented
fictionalized reality, an image of everyday life of the ordinary people.
Instead of traditional epic plots, abstract universality and stylized (either
good or bad) characters, they introduced in simple colloquial prose
middle and even lower class heroes, placed in contemporary
context. They founded their stories on credibility and realism in content.
Importantly new was its dealing with the inner life and the individual
psychology, creating a bond of intimacy between a reader and a hero as
well as the reader and the author, which enabled the process of
identification. The latter was facilitated by setting the stories in a familiar
context and by using contemporary references to the well known figures
of the time (politicians, writers, actors etc.), as well as to the famous
venues and events. In short, the author, the hero and the reader shared
the same ‘world’.
The plot put forward the micro-image of life, but always attached it to the
‘big issues’ of morale and virtue, often with an explicit didactic
component. It has to be said though that what was moral was not always
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agreed upon, and the heroes regularly strayed away from ‘the right path’
only to find it again in the end.
There were perhaps two main types: they both focused on the individual,
but one was written in the first person narrative, usually in the form of a
diary or letters; while the other used the third person narrator and sent the
hero wandering around the world, where he had to live through different,
more or less adventurous episodes in a picaresque-like style.If the latter
type of novelwriting allowed for a more vulgar poetics and chose
predominantly male main characters, the diary and epistolary novels
rather functioned as sentimental confessions of the heroine’s emotions.
A characteristic plot featured an unhappy love affair between a lowerclass virtuous beauty and a gentleman, both in love with each other, but
unable to unite due to severe social constraints. When there seems to be
no solution for the two and both are on the brinks of marrying somebody
else, a sudden revelation puts everything in order: it turns out that as a
baby the heroine was swapped by a nurse and is in fact of a noble birth, a
daughter of some lord, which makes it possible for the happy couple to
marry. One cannot claim the plots of nowadays romances and
soap operas are much different.
Using a similar pattern, they on the one side provide the topics of
universal relevance, such as love and family relations and average
everyday problems, enabling and inviting identification, while on the
other, they supply constant emotional drama, extraordinary beauty and
exciting adventure, thus carefully maintaining the gap between the world
of the reader/viewer
(slide) famous novels
Famous british novelist were Daniel Defoe and his Robinson Crusoe
(1719) but, perhaps less know to you the most famous one, everybody
was talking about in Europe was Samuel Richardsons, and Pamela
(1740). Clarissa (1747-1748)
It has slightly pornographic scnenes in it.
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(slide)
Pamela : Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded is an epistolary novel by
Samuel Richardson, first published in 1740. It tells the story of a
beautiful 15-year-old maidservant named Pamela Andrews, whose
country landowner master, Mr. B, makes unwanted advances
towards her after the death of his mother. After attempting
unsuccessfully to seduce and rape her, her virtue is eventually
rewarded when he sincerely proposes an equitable marriage to her.
In the novel's second part, Pamela marries Mr B and tries to
acclimatise to upper-class society.
The story, a best-seller of its time, very much so because of its
perceived licentiousness. It was even an early “multimedia” event,
producing Pamela-themed cultural artefacts such as prints, paintings,
waxworks, a fan, and a set of playing cards decorated with lines from
Richardson's works. There were also several satires, the most famous
being An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews by Henry
Fielding, Shamela portrays the protagonist as an amoral social
climber who attempts to seduce "Squire Booby" while feigning
innocence to manipulate him into marrying her.
Clarissa, or, the History of a Young Lady – one of the longest
novels in the English language. It tells the tragic story of a
heroine whose quest for virtue is continually thwarted by her
family. She is supposed to be married of for the social climbing
of the family; falls in the hands of a vicious man who rapes her
and abducts her but she excapes and dies a virtuous death.
It is not hard to understand that the novels as described were accessible
literally to everybody at least vaguely literate. This was something the
publishers and booksellers took good advantage of and on that basis
novel-reading soon became a popular form of leisure and pleasure, the
kind that could be easily compared to watching a television serial
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Now these novels – and most of the are directed at a femal readership are
considered increasingly a real problem – the created of what some literary
scholars have argued – a mini moral panic.
Let us listen to one of the many reports:
Women, of every age, of every condition, contract and retain a taste for
novels […T]he depravity is universal. My sight is every-where offended
by these foolish, yet dangerous, books. I find them on the toilette of
fashion, and in the work-bag of the sempstress; in the hands of the lady,
who lounges on the sofa, and of the lady, who sits at the counter. From
the mistresses of nobles they descend to the mistresses of snuff-shops –
from the belles who read them in town, to the chits who spell them in the
country. I have actually seen mothers, in miserable garrets, crying for the
imaginary distress of an heroine, while their children were crying for
bread: and the mistress of a family losing hours over a novel in the
parlour, while her maids, in emulation of the example, were similarly
employed in the kitchen. I have seen a scullion-wench with a dishclout in
one hand, and a novel in the other, sobbing o’er the sorrows of Julia, or a
Jemima. It is a disgrace!
(Sylph no. 5, October 6, 1796: 36-37)1
(slide image of a reading women)
What are these concerns?
Arguments against were numerous and they varied according to who
they were addressed to and, cunningly, often even which novel they
referred to, but what they all had in common revealed one and the same
fear about the generally corruptive effects on morals and manners of the
reader, particularly those of women.
Example:
O! for a warning voice to prevent those, at least, in whom age
has not yet destroyed the capabilities of improvement, from
dreaming away their hours in turning over publications like
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these.
(image of reading lady) pompdour
Considering that the novel-reading public was regarded as predominantly
female and that women were already perceived as in all respects weaker,
fanciful, more sensitive and thus more liable to bad influence, the
situation seemed all the more alarming.
Lets remember our session on women and Wollestonecrafts worry against
the typical women in the 18th century. The brainless little thing just
looking for admiration…these novels describe such a women – and then
complain about it. I am sure she was not a novel reader1
But it also had more serious physical harm and another commentator
tells us:
(slide)
‘the obligatory position, the lack of all physical movement
when reading, combined with the violent alternation of
imaginings and feelings [create] limpness, bloatedness and
constipation of the intestines, in a word hypochondria, which
has a recognized effect on the genitals of both sexes,
particularly of the female sex [and creates] coagulations and
defects in the blood, excitation and exhaustion of the nervous
system, as well as conditions of langour and weakness in the
whole body.’
So readings makes you physically sick – as too much TV does for us
harm too.
Physiology of seeing and the understanding of the split between
body and mind:
The reason why that is has to do with the physiology of seeing and
the theories of passion and sentiment. – remember here our earlier
sessions on perception and Desartes and also last week on the rise of
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‘sentiment’ and sympathy’.
Generally there was the Desartian belief in the distinction
between mind and body; of the that humans are ruled by reason –
the rational soul with seat in the brain. But their bodies were run by
the sensitive soul responsible for rising the passions. And these
constantly threatened to overrun the body and try to control the
reason and the rational soul. So it was a constant battle – we have
seen that this fitted very well a society that constantly lived in a kind
of constraint to be polite—Peter Dears article on Desartes and court
society explaining this in detail. Now reading had exactly the possible
effect!
By reading words on a page – images formed in your imagination –
one of the factulties of yoru reasons and people – particularly those
with a weak rational soul like women – would be easily convince that
these were real. So, they could decide anymore what was real and
what not. They lived in a world of confusion about the reality out
there.
(refer to article by Adrian Johns). They stoped eating, engaging with
other people and retreated into a universe of romance with servious
effect – they withered away…
The contemporary press abounded in carefully detailed cases of young
women, whom such reading has deluded. An article in The Weekly
Magazine in November 1771 reports how “the lovely Flavia forsook her
faithful lover and ended up in London in a tawdry silk gown and
petticoat, with a meagre countenance” (in Taylor, 1943: 78). Mrs.
Elizabeth Montagu blamed novels for the love entanglements of her
acquaintance Miss Hunter, who ran away to Holland with the married
Earl of Pembroke (see Blunt, 1923).
Novels were accused of creating expectations which life could not fulfil,
and of wearying the sympathies and producing callousness by constantly
exposing the reader to scenes of exciting pathos (Williams, 1970: 13Now, the pornographic novel – is relying in this form. In fact, here the
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arousal of the passions is deliberate !!! But also dangerous…..too much
reading of such stuff would make you look like this
(image of serious masturbator)
—too much ‘decharge’ as Peyps has called it will make you sick. There
was a serious panic in the 18th century and many medical books were
written on the serious disease of ‘self-polluting.
(Tissot—on onania)
Another real effect reading of pornography would have is venereal
disease. Particularly if it made you act on your passions – not on your
own but visit a bordello of prostitute. Given that these men were
blamed for their poor bodily condition, stemming from lack of selfcontrol, no wonder shame and fear were constant companions for
the venereal sufferer.
(venereal disease image)
Venereal disease is a very serious threat at the time; it is very widespread
and
On the realism, on the intimacy of the reader with the narrator,
identification with the hero or heronine, they promise to teach the reader
some vice and virtue. Pornography would have been not such a success,
had there not been the novel lots of literary scholars have claimed.
It is not suprising therefore that the what we would call a pornographic
novel do appear at the same time as the novel which is the height of the
Enlightenment, the first rise in 1740. It also is the time of incrasing
polticial and social crisis in Europe. We talked the endless wars, we talk
increasing dissasstisfaction with the absolute political regimes. It is an
attack on the clerical regime, police centorship, and the narrowness and
prejudices of conventional mores. – the same mores that were portrayed
in the romantic novel--
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So, the pornographical novel reflect all these social and political changes
and is often an attack on the ‘ancient regime’ and their authors aim to put
forward wider philosophical themes. Several famous philosophers such as
Denis Diderot wrote what we now consider pornography to underline
their views on human nature:
(slide)
Sexual appetite was natural. Repression of sexual appetite was artificial
and pointless and the passions were necessary in making people happy in
the world. Pornography is central if you like to the bigger project of the
enlightenment ‘science of man’ if you like. As we shall see with Sade, its
author were not only naturalists but also materialists –
Materialists, holds that matter is the fundamental substance in
nature, and that all phenomena, including mental phenomena and
consciousness, are the result of material interactions – the idea that
men are machines and a ,machine like production of pleasure.
So the pornographic novel in the 18th-century is much more than just sex
– as pornography tend to be today – it is a political and social
commentary.
It is a commentary on women:
The Libertine Whore
Prostitution in such novels is key subjects. Already in Aretino’s
Ragionamenti is a conversation between two whores. From the
Renaissance to the French Revolution courtesans filled the page of such
works. Because she is so present, historians have argued that the
prostitute can function as a social barometer and indicate new attitudes
towards old political hierarchies. Depending on the author the prostitute
can ridicule or celebrate her clients, who encompass everyone from old
aristocrats to upstart bourgeois. She can beeither social critic or
complacent observer, and her boudoir can be a place of political agitation
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or simply dalliance. At the same time the prostitute reveals a great deal
about attidues toward women, female sexuality and women’s social role.
At the same time, we should not forget that the prostitute in such novels
is of course entirely fictional, an image which had much more to do with
male fantasies and with social reality.
In all the 18th century pornographic literature – so texts which are
fictional, sexually explicit and contemptuous of sexual taboos. And all of
them deal with the role of the libertine whore. This whore is independent,
sensual, sensible and skilled. She is healthy and possessed a very healthy
– that is normal – appetite. She is a business women and an artist who
provides ‘variet’s sex for men who can affort it. She is a courtesan who
lives in luxury and abides by ‘philosophy’, usually materialist
philosophy. Intellegent, independent, pround and reasonable, she is not
disease or monstrous; she is not humilitated or victimized either by life or
her clients. She may have come from workling –class roots but she
overcomes them through her education and intellignence.
She is also the polar opposite of another kind of prostitute who appear in
the 18th literature, what literary scholars have a called the ‘virtuous
courtesan’ which arise around 1760s. is one example
She is fundamentally good. She is hapless viction, an impoverished
working-class girl who is dominated by and abused, diseases in body and
sometimes in spirit, doomed to endure sadism of o both men and society.
(slide) Restif de la Bretonne Zephire, Le Paysan perverti – seduced and
abandoned as a teenager in Paris, she becomes a prostitute, but somehow
retains natural goodness, even innocence in the midst of her debauche.
Message is: women are naturally modest, childlike and asexual – even as
a prostitute ( or rather a women forced into prostitution since none of
them chose that life style.
(slide) Le Palais Royale.
You can see here the morals of the time working; transporting these
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sex differences into the pornography;
Introduced if you like Rousseau’ idea of womenhood – his idea
women Sophie in Emile and his propagation of sexual difference.
So, these two women stand next to each other in these novels.
The libertine prostitute is of course opposite the childlike one.
The famous English example of libertine whore is John Cleland’s
(slide)
Fanny Hill or Memoirs of Women of pleasure
It is a story of a confession a story of a journey, not towards selfawareness, but towards professional expertise, success and therefore,
prosperity. It is also a story told by the whore herself. The whore novel is
a rare example in which a women speaks about and fore herself. – of
course the result is ultimate intimacy…it is almost as if you are with htat
prostitute, creating her pleasure. The first –peron encounter is not a
device that empowers prostitutes or covenys female subjectivity. Author
of such texts were men and thery predominantly for a male readership.
The libertine whore is a reflection of male sexuality and morrir of man’s
lust. ‘She must please’
In terms of sexual politics she has nothing but scorne for he new ideal of
womenhood with its belief in innate feminitity modesty and virtue.
The aggression in such novels makes you think that they were actually
written against that. Virtue is a vile prejudice impressed upon girls by
their parents’, says one prostitute to another. ‘Women are born for
pleasure, says another and the modesty that is supposed to distinguish
women from men is an illusion.
To be sure here: the novel is not to deny the anatomical difference of men
and women; in fact, they lavish attention on the female body. And
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through text and image the reader gets a vivid image of the female
anatomy. Of course the text does not focus on maternal breasts but the
cliteroris, the organ that most closely approximates the other emphasized
organ, the penis. In fact, a few women with whom the whore consorts,
especially tribates (lesibians) have outsides clitoris.
The seasoned whore however has more than one clitoris, she has her art
and her equilment
(sex toys are coming into fashion – dildos here )
and these allow her to ursurp the male role of the penetrator. Anal sex is
one of her weapons and ine of her greatest pleasure.
Nor do the anatomical difference hinder the prostitute in her search for
pleasure, becaue male and female experience the sexual act in a virtually
identical manner. As orgasm approaches, both become delirious and then
‘discharge’ repeatedly. Whore and client are ‘drowned’ and
‘drenched’and bathed in what is often described as a a celestrial liquid
that is both male and female.
Medical ideas:
Extreme focus on the genitals – images and text
(images)
it is part wthis wider fascination with biological sex difference. Antatomy
is a big upscoming scienc at the time – we will see this on Friday when
my ex-phd will talk about the most fampus antomists in 18th century
London, the Hunter brother. We have what we could call ‘modern
genitals arising.
(William Cooper, The anatomy of Human Bodies, 1667) – slide.
Vagina is depicted here open so it does not have the penis like
effect of the Renaissance illustrations. Organs which had been
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common to both sexes were not separated due to the discovery of
sperm and the egg. Testicles become exclusively male. Ovary, -no longer called female stones or female testicles came to
designate organs of regeneration.
Also the idea of organism as necessary – on both sides – for
conception gets unstable. However it is not out of the world. – rape
was always in discussion here.
So, the mechanic here are not really solved but fact in these novels the
libertine whore is never getting pregnant.
So, strangely these novels which celebrate the libertine is some either out
of date – or is it many historians have argued, a deliberate attack on the
new notion of womenhood. She is not modest, independend. Loving or
maternal. Does not believe in romantic love or the private, family sphere.
She is a public women. In control of her own life.
The epitomy of such a women is of course the
Juliette of the Marquis de Sade.
(images) – I shall come back to that in a minute.
With the French revolution and particularly after, this images changes.
We don’t have these litertine whores anymore; story dwell on the sordid
side of things. They are much more explicit and vulgar in language. Of
course she looses her clientele, the old elites the nobility and the religious
clergy. The prostitute comes down from her pedestale. She now available
to everyone, rich or poor, common laborer or the newly created citizen.
Stripped from her elegant trappings, the whore now becomes a symbol of
the laboring poor and the emblem of class, a victim on the mode of Restif
or other virtuous novelists. The libertine’s whores last stand, her final
triumph and swan song was in the early Revolution. After that, author
pornographic and others seem to have lost interest in her. She will never
regain that status.
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These novels do not only reflect these changes in the understanding of
women hood but also changes in male perception and understanding. And
again this is criticized in these novels.
We moved from a society in the 16th and 17th century where male
homosexuality was more or less accepted—it is morally wrong but done-- renaissance in particular.
Within the 18th century sexuality for men was redefined as an act with
women only.
Sodomy was increasingly prosecuted and stigmatized as the behavior of
an effeminate minority, regardless of whether an individual partner was
adult or adolecent. These effeminate men were regarded as desiring to be
women; described as moving, speaking, and dressing like women, and
engaging in female occupations. Molly was the street name for these
men.
(slide)
Together the prostitute and the sodomite displayed the boundaries of
appropriate gender behavior for the majority of people in society where
true women were not whores and real men were not sodomites.
Real women were mothers and real man were good and loving husbands
and father. – these new ideas particularly in the aristocracy were
advertised and practiced everywhere.
(image of ‘loving family’) (picture of and sex manual for married
couples)
the male reaction against that in pornographic novels or real life was the
libertine
the male libertine -in such novels, the aristocratic rogue who leads poor Pamela astray. A
man who disregards all that family things. A rake, short for rakehell
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(analogous to "hellraiser"), is a historic term applied to a man who is
habituated to immoral conduct, particularly womanising. Often a
rake was also prodigal who wasted his (usually inherited) fortune on
gambling, wine, women and song, incurring lavish debts in the
process.
(high time is the early 18th century but increasingly is moralised) –
Hogard picture)
and the set up of special clubs – so called Hellfire clubs in Britain
clubs for high society rakes in 18th century Britain One of the most famous ones was that of Sir Francis Dashwood's
Order of the Friars of St. Francis of Wycombe.Such clubs were
rumoured to be the meeting places of "persons of quality" who
wished to take part in immoral acts, and the members were often
very involved in politics. Neither the activities nor membership of the
club are easy to ascertain
(Dashford image)
These clubs were both critique of new standards of sexuality and
outlets for non-conformist sexual behavior and gender roles; but they
are also critiqus of politics
Pornography and politics).
Historians have particularly focused on revolutionary France because
it is prominent here.
Easy to see…the libertine prostitute’s clients are men of the ruling
classes; particularly clergy and nobility. To read about their
debauchery is used to arouse, on one hand. On the other hand, we
should not forget it is also of course meant as a critique of the
horrendous state of the institutions such men stood for, the Church
and absolutist Government. It is therefore not a coincidence that
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several revolutionary figures were Mirabeau and St Juste had written
pornography. And some leading pornographer – here de Sade directly
participated in the revolution.
(slides) of priests having sex…(collage of aristocrat woman)
when the French Revolutions begins it used as a new form of popular
politics in form of increasingly vile attacks on courtiers and particularly
on the queen, Marie Antoinette.
In the 1790 the politically motivate pornography reached it zenith – both
in number and viciousness – and then virtually disappears to be replaced
by a pornography that continued to contest social and moral taboos
without however targeting political figures. In Western Europe by the
1830s at the latest, it appears that pornography had lost its previous
association with subversive philosophy and politics; and became a genre
on its own.
I want to turn in the last minutes to the greatest pornographer of the 18thc
entry and clearly also the weirdest, the Marquis de Sade.
I want to bring something out I haven’t talked about and that is the
importance of materialist philosophy as a driving force of his writings
and his stand against Rousseau and his view that human nature is good –
Marquis wishes to prove with all his writings that Rousseau is wrong.
Human nature is bad.
(slide)
who is he?
Sade lived a scandalous libertine existence and repeatedly procured
young prostitutes as well as employees of both sexes in his castle in
Lacoste. He was also accused of blasphemy, a serious offence at that
time. His behavior included an affair with his wife's sister! Beginning in
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1763, Sade lived mainly in or near Paris. Several prostitutes there
complained about mistreatment by him and he was put under surveillance
by the police, who made detailed reports of his activities. After several
short imprisonments, he was exiled to his château at Lacoste in 1768.
The first major scandal occurred in 1768, in which Sade procured the
sexual services of prostitute and then was later accused by her to have
abducted her to his chateau at Arcueil, imprisoning her there and sexually
and physically abusing her. She managed to escape.
He continues to defy authority and morals. In 1772, he is involved in the
non-lethal poisoning of prostitutes with the supposed Spanish. That year,
he and his manservant were sentenced to death for sodomy and the
poisoning. Consequently they flee to, Sade taking his wife's sister with
him. Sade and Latour were caught and imprisoned 1772, but manage to
escape.
Sade later hid at Lacoste, where he rejoined his wife, who became an
accomplice in his subsequent organised ‘orgies. For example, he kept a
group of young employees at Lacoste for this purpose, most of whom
complained about sexual mistreatment and quickly left his service. Sade
was forced to flee to Italy once again. In 1776, he returned to Lacoste,
where he again hired several servant girls – again they were mistreated
and fled. (In 1777, the father of one of those employees went to Lacoste
to claim his daughter, and attempted to shoot the Marquis at point-blank
range, but the gun misfired.)
Later that year, Sade was tricked into going to Paris to visit his
supposedly ill mother, who in fact had recently died. He was arrested
there and imprisoned in the Château de Vincennes. He successfully
appealed his death sentence in 1778, escaped but was soon recaptured.
In 1784, Vincennes was closed and Sade was transferred to the Bastille.
On 2 July 1789, he reportedly shouted out from his cell to the crowd
outside, "They are killing the prisoners here!", and a disturbance began to
foment. Two days later, he was transferred to the insane asylum at
Charenton near Paris. He is freed and works for the ‘Revolution’.
However after the Revolution, in 1801, Napoleon ordered the arrest of the
anonymous author of Justine and Juliette. Sade was arrested at his
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publisher's office and imprisoned without trial; first in the Sainte-Pélagie
prison and, following allegations that he had tried to seduce young fellow
prisoners there, in the harsh fortress of Bicêtre.
After intervention by his family, he was declared insane in 1803 and
transferred once more to the asylum at Charenton. However, the director
of the institution encouraged him to stage several of his plays, with the
inmates as actors, to be viewed by the Parisian public. They great successes.
In 1809, new police orders ended this ‘entertainment of the mad’ and put
Sade into solitary confinement and deprived him of pens and paper. In
1813, the government ordered Coulmier to suspend all theatrical
performances. This did not prevent Sade from beginning a sexual
relationship with 14-year-old Madeleine LeClerc, daughter of an
employee at Charenton. This affair lasted some 4 years, until his death in
1814.
He wrote most of this works in prison.
Justine (original French title: Les infortunes de la vertu) was an early
work written in two weeks in 1787 while imprisoned in the Bastille.
Contains surprisingly little obscenity – compared to later works.
The 120 Days of Sodom, or the School of Libertinism was written in
1785. Story of four wealthy male libertines who resolve to experience the
ultimate sexual gratification in orgies. They seal themselves away for
four months in an inaccessible castle with a harem of 46 victims, mostly
young male and female teenagers, and engage four female brothel
keepers to tell the stories of their lives and adventures. The women's
narratives form an inspiration for the sexual abuse and torture of the
victims, which gradually mounts in intensity and ends in their slaughter.
The novel is written in capitivty within 37 days – as most of the other
stuff too. Being short of writing materials and fearing confiscation, he
wrote it in tiny hand writing on a continuous, twelve-metre-long (39.37
feet) roll of paper, made up of individual small pieces of paper smuggled
into the prison and glued together.
(slide of manuscript)
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When the Bastille was stormed and looted on July 14, 1789, during the
height of the French Revolution, de Sade believed the work was lost
forever and later wrote that he "wept tears of blood" over its loss.
However, the long roll of paper on which it was written was found hidden
in walls of his cell, having escaped the attentions of the looters. It was
first published in 1904 in Germany.
Juliette is a novel written 1797–1801, accompanying Sade's Nouvelle
Justine. While Justine, Juliette's sister, was a virtuous woman who
consequently encountered nothing but despair and abuse, Juliette is an
amoral nymphomaniac murderer who is successful and happy. ---- it is a
deliberate attack on Richardson’s Pamela
Philosophical outlook of his work:
If one removes the narrative and pornographic scenes in his works, what
would be left could perhaps be the ultimate example of Sade's lifelong
philosophy. Juliette and his others works holds that "nature" (often
referred to as 'she' by the characters) is the prime mover of all human
experience, and through implanting sexual appetites and desires in man it
has thereby justified all sexual depravities. Sade argues that desire is an
intrinsically natural phenomenon and therefore is wholly justifiable, no
matter how violent or depraved, for it has come from nature, and to
establish rules such as morality and political law which prevent one from
exercising one's desires, mankind is offending nature.
His work is to free nature from these constraints. To allow his
imagaintion as he argues to play through how it would be like to live in
such a society in which nature rules.
Clearly see his anti-rousseauian stance.
In Sodom the people who don\t get it are the good ones, the ones that
hope, and these are constantly overrun, destroyed, tortued by the real
nature of those who didn’t suppress it any longer
So, in a way this pornographic work – which by the way inspired many
authors of the 190th century – who also looked after human nature – is a
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philosophical piece of work disguised as pornography. It is not to be read
as pornography—in our modern understanding of the word.
.
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