ABSTRACT
What does obscene mean? What does it have to say about the means through which meaning is produced and received in literary, artistic and, more broadly, social acts of representation and interaction? Early modern France and Europe faced these questions not only in regard to the political, religious and artistic reformations for which the Renaissance stands, but also in light of the reconfiguration of its mediasphere in the wake of the invention of the printing press. The Politics of Obscenity brings together researchers from Europe and the United States in offering scholars of early modern Europe a detailed understanding of the implications and the impact of obscene representations in their relationship to the Gutenberg Revolution which came to define Western modernity.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter |27 pages
Introduction
part I|127 pages
Obscene Means
section |85 pages
Obscene Materials in Manuscript Culture and Early Prints
chapter 2|14 pages
The “Hermaphrodite” of Modena
chapter 4|23 pages
Courtly Obscenities Between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
section |39 pages
Shifting Obscenities, from Manuscript to Print
chapter 6|20 pages
To Be or Not to Be Part of the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles
part II|123 pages
Obscene Expositions
section |60 pages
Impressions of the Body: The Genres of Renaissance Obscenity
chapter 8|18 pages
From Panurge to Pan
section |61 pages
The Religious Ob-Scene: Towards a Politics of Obscenity
chapter 11|15 pages
Performing Protestant Identity Through Obscene Poetry
part III|58 pages
Impressions and Reimpressions of an Obscene Modernity
section |25 pages
The Language in Question or the Trouble with Words
section |30 pages
Afterlives: On the History of Obscene Books
