Imagining Sex: Pornography and Bodies in Seventeenth-Century England

ISBN-13: 9780199209149 / Angielski / Twarda / 2007 / 300 str.

Sarah Toulalan

Opis

Imagining Sex is a study of pornographic writing in seventeenth-century England. It explores a wide variety of written material from the period to argue that, unlike today, pornography was not a discrete genre, nor was it one that was usually subject at this time to suppression. Pornographic writing was a widespread feature of a range of texts, including both popular literature (ballads, news-sheets, court reports, small books, and pamphlets) as well as poetry, drama and more specialised medical books. The book analyses representations of sex, sexuality and eroticism in historical context to explore contemporary thinking about these issues, but also about broader cultural concerns and shifts in attitudes. It questions both modern feminist and psychoanalytical interpretations of pornography, arguing that these approaches are neither appropriate nor helpful to an understanding of seventeenth-century material.
Through discussions of sex and reproduction, homosexuality, flagellation, voyeurism, and humour, the book explores the nature of early modern sexual desire and arousal and explores their relationship to contemporary understandings about how the body worked. Imagining Sex presents a radically new interpretation of pornography in this period, arguing that concerns about fertility were at the heart of representations of bodies and sex, so that images of pleasure were entwined with ideas about conception and reproduction. It also shows that these texts legitimized the (sexual) pleasure of the reader by highlighting the pleasure of looking and the incitement to sexual action that it provided.

Recenzje

There is much to admire in this book. [Toulalan] potentially rewrites our understanding of seventeenth-century notions of the male gaze and the male body's relation to such key issues as patriarchal authority, privacy, gender norms, and sexual desire. Toulalan's positions are further augmented by the fact that Imagining Sex is richly illustrated with reproductions of seventeenth-century engravings. Her presentation of both these texts and their illustrations is a major contribution to current scholarship.