Understanding Pornographic Fiction

This work defends two main theses. First, modern Western pornographic fiction functions as a self-deceptive vehicle for sexual or blood-lustful arousal; and second, that its emergence owes as much to Puritan Protestantism and its inner- or this-worldly asceticism as does the emergence of modern rationalized capitalism.

Argues that modern Western sexual pornographic narrative fiction emerged as a distinct genre in eighteenth-century England, descending from literary obscenity Hypothesizes a causal-historical relationship between Max Weber's Protestant ethic and this genre of fiction Adopts a genealogical approach to the problem of accounting for the emergence of pornographic fiction in the modern West

Autorentext
Charles O. Nussbaum received his PhD in Philosophy in 1988 from Emory University, USA. He has taught at Northwestern University, Northern Michigan University, and is currently Professor of Philosophy at UT Arlington. His publications include The Musical Representation and papers on the philosophy of mind, aesthetics, and Kant.

Inhalt
Preface.-Chapter 1: The Protestant Ethic and Modern Western Pornographic Fiction.- Chapter 2: Literary Discourse and Pragmatic Implicature.- Chapter 3: Pornographic Fiction, Implicature, and Imaginative Resistance.- Chapter 4: Pornographic Fiction and Personal Integrity. Select Bibliography