The History of Modern Pornography
Patricia Davis, Ph.D., Simon Noble and Rebecca J. White (2010)
Abstract
The following paper analyzes the evolution of pornography from 1527 until 2009. It addresses the people, inventions, events and phenomena that have shaped pornography’s modern history. This paper has identified three meaningful trends. (1) The interpretation and acceptance of pornography has radically shifted over the last five hundred years. To assume that we are at the zenith of our pornographic tolerance would be presumptuous. (2) The increased quantity and quality of pornography is principally a derivation of new technologies; pornography is likely to become more pervasive as technology develops. (3) Censorship and opposition to pornography have had little effect in stemming the tide; the biological chemistry of sexual desire has outlived all censorship attempts and will continue to do so.
Definition of pornography
For the purposes of this paper, pornography is defined as any media with sexual activity or nudity that stimulates erotic as opposed to aesthetic feelings in a community. Such feelings are subjective and change with the passage of time.
The Sixteenth Century
Rome is the birthplace of modern pornography; the history begins amongst the print culture of the Italian Renaissance. In 1524, Marcantonio Raimondi published sixteen sexually explicit engravings that were designed by Giulio Romano and collectively titled the I Modi. The I Modi visually depicted figures from Greco-Roman mythology to Classical antiquity, enjoying the pleasures of copulation. In response to this scandal, Pope Clement VIII placed Raimondi in prison, where he remained for almost a year, until a consortium including Pietro Aretino (the founder of modern pornography) negotiated his release. (Lawner, 1988).
Pietro Aretino (1492-1556), the Italian author, polemicist and satirist, was a product of Renaissance humanism (Symonds, 1881). He wrote two pornographic masterpieces, the Sonetti lussuriosi (1527) and the Ragionamenti (1534-36) which were circulated amongst the aristocracy. The Sonetti lussuriosi or Aretino’s Postures as it came to be known, combined Aretino’s sexually explicit sonnets with the engravings of Romano from the I Modi. The Ragionamenti was an extension of Aretino’s Postures; it documented a dialogue between prostitutes and became the prototype for pornographic prose in the seventeenth century (Hunt, 1993). Aretino’s work was pornographic, voyeuristic, controversial, heretical, and politically incorrect. “Nowhere in European literature prior to Pietro Aretino … do we encounter the combination of explicit sexual detail and evident intention to arouse that became, three hundred years later, the hallmark of the pornographic” (Kendrick, 1996, p. 58).
The Seventeenth Century
Aretino’s Postures and the Ragionamenti continued to dominate European pornography throughout the seventeenth century; new works were either copies or loosely based imitations. A notable imitation of the Ragionamenti was the French L’Ecole des filles (1655). Anonymously written, the book is a dialogue between two prostitutes; the inexperienced but eager Fanchon and the accomplished Susanne (L'Ecole des filles, 2001). L’Ecole des filles marked the beginning of the French pornographic tradition.
For the purposes of this paper, pornography is defined as any media with sexual activity or nudity that stimulates erotic as opposed to aesthetic feelings in a community. Such feelings are subjective and change with the passage of time.
The Twenty-first Century
Today
Conclusions
This paper has identified three meaningful trends. (1) The public interpretation and acceptance of pornography has radically shifted over the last five hundred years. To assume that we are at the zenith of our pornographic tolerance would be presumptuous. (2) The increased quantity and quality of pornography is principally a derivation of new technologies; pornography is likely to become more pervasive as technology develops. (3) Censorship and opposition to pornography have had little effect in stemming the tide; the biological chemistry of sexual desire has outlived all censorship attempts and will continue to do so.
There were several limitations to this study. (1) Compressing such a large space of time and history, made it necessary to overlook numerous in-depth details. (2) This paper is based upon a compilation of English-language literature that originates predominantly from the United States and Europe. (3) This paper analyzes the history of modern pornography from a Western tradition; this is because pornography in its current form is primarily a Western construct.
