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Modernism, Mass Culture, and the Aesthetics of Obscenity

Author: Allison Pease, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York

Date Published: September 2000
availability: Available
format: Hardback
isbn: 9780521780766

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Description

How did explicit sexual representation become acceptable in the twentieth century as art rather than pornography? Allison Pease answers this question by tracing the relationship between aesthetics and obscenity from the 1700s onward, focusing especially on the way in which early twentieth-century writers incorporated a sexually explicit discourse into their work. The book considers the work of Swinburne, Joyce and Lawrence and artist Aubrey Beardsley within the framework of a wide-ranging account of aesthetic theory beginning with Kant and concluding with F. R. Leavis, I. A. Richards and T. S. Eliot.
- Offers a wide-ranging theoretical and historical account of the relationship between aesthetics and pornography, from the eighteenth to the twentieth century; based on original, archival research
- Examines the works of well-known artists such A. C. Swinburne, Aubrey Beardsley, James Joyce and D. H. Lawrence
- Contains 24 illustrations of period art and pornography
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Reviews & endorsements
"Pease's energetic writing style enlivens the impressively dense scholarship that underwrites the argument throughout her book...Modernism, Mass Culture, and the Aesthetics of Obscenity will speak to students and professors of aesthetics, philosophy, and literature, and it should serve as a model of interdisciplinary engagement for scholars throughout the humanities." South Central Review
"...Pease has produced a provocative book likely to stir some controversy in academic circles." Choice
"Pease contributes significantly to the study of this compelling topic." Modernism/Modernity
"This is an impressive book-elegantly conceived and suffused with intelligence...The book is meticulously researched and exceptionally well-documented, with clear, eloquently chiseled arguementation unusually strong in its logic and relatively free of obfuscating jargon...Throughout her study, she does an excellent job of positioning eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century aesthetic philosophies within the cultural politics of their respective times..." English Literature in Transition
"Modernism, Mass Culture, and the Aesthetics of Obscenity offers a rich addition to studies of the limits of representation and material culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. ...provocative, highly persuasive..." The Wordsworth Circle
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Product details
- Date Published: September 2000
- format: Hardback
- isbn: 9780521780766
- length: 262 pages
- dimensions: 229 x 152 x 19 mm
- weight: 0.56kg
- contains: 24 b/w illus.
- availability: Available
Table of Contents
1. Civil society: aesthetics and pornography in the eighteenth century
2. Victorian obscenities: the new reading public, pornography and Swinburne's sexual aesthetic
3. The mastery of form: Beardsley and Joyce
4. Being disinterested: D. H. Lawrence
5. Modernist criticism: the battle for culture and the accommodation of the obscene.
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Author
Allison Pease, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York