The Secret Museum

Download or read book The Secret Museum written by Walter M. Kendrick and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although erotica has always existed, "pornography" is a recent phenomenon: as late as the eighteenth century the word did not exist. From the secret museums to the pornography trials of Madame Bovary and Lady Chatterly's Lover, to Mapplethorpe, cable TV, and the Internet, Walter Kendrick explores how conceptions of pornography relate to issues of freedom of expression and censorship. He provides, too, a fascinating portrait gallery of the jurists, artists, guardians of public morality, sleaze merchants, and civil libertarians who have played roles in the changing definitions of pornography.