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Understanding Pornographic Fiction

Sex, Violence, and Self-Deception

  • Book
  • © 2015

Overview

Authors:
  1. Charles O. Nussbaum

    1. University of Texas, USA

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  • 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

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Table of contents (4 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-ix
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  2. The Protestant Ethic and Modern Western Pornographic Fiction

    • Charles O. Nussbaum
    Pages 1-24

  3. Literary Discourse and Pragmatic Implicature

    • Charles O. Nussbaum
    Pages 25-53

  4. Pornographic Fiction, Implicature, and Imaginative Resistance

    • Charles O. Nussbaum
    Pages 54-101

  5. Pornographic Fiction and Personal Integrity

    • Charles O. Nussbaum
    Pages 102-150

  6. Back Matter

    Pages 151-187
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Keywords

About this book

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.

Authors and Affiliations

  • University of Texas, USA

    Charles O. Nussbaum

About the author

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.

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