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 1 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 2 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 3 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. 4 (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 5 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. 6 (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 7 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. 8 (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 9 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 10 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 11 ‘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 12 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-- 13 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 14 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 15 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 16 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 17 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. 18 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 19 (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 20 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 21 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 22 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) 23 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 24 philosophical piece of work disguised as pornography. It is not to be read as pornography—in our modern understanding of the word. . 25