Modernism, Mass Culture, and the Aesthetics of Obscenity [Hardcover]

Examines the changing relationship between art and pornography from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century.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 onwards, focusing especially on the way in which early twentieth-century writers incorporated a sexually explicit discourse into their work. Richly illustrated, 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.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 onwards, focusing especially on the way in which early twentieth-century writers incorporated a sexually explicit discourse into their work. Richly illustrated, 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.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.1. Civil society: aesthlÓ$