Description

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Pornography first developed in western Europe during the late eighteenth century in tandem with the rise of utilitarianism, the philosophical position that stresses the importance of something's usefulness over its essence. Through incisive readings of Sade, Flaubert, Lawrence, and Bret Easton Ellis, Frances Ferguson here shows how pornography—like utilitarian social structures—diverts our attention from individual identities to actions and renders more clearly the social value of such actions through concrete literary representations.

About the Author

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Frances Ferguson is the Mabel Greene Myers Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of English at the University of Chicago. She is the author of Pornography, the Theory; Wordsworth: Language as Counter-Spirit; and Solitude and the Sublime: Romanticism and the Aesthetics of Individuation.