Defining Early Modern Pornography: The Case of Venus and Adonis

Much of the discussion concerning the history of sexual representation positions pornography as an end product of a modern teleology that links pornography with moral corruption and culminates in the anti-pornography and free speech debates of the late twentieth century. In light of recent changes to the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of the term pornography, this paper argues that pornography’s relevance in early modern studies be re-evaluated. Pornography, as a term that conveys at once the sexual and transgressive aspects of a representation, allows us to interrogate the broader relationship between sexuality and morality in the period, and to weigh individual inclinations toward sexual pleasure against societal pressures to conform to the moral codes that regulated sexual conduct. This paper traces the history of the term pornography and then explores how the elements of the current 2006 definition can be recontextualized to reflect early modern views on erotics, aesthetics, and sexuality. It formulates a definition of pornography as a reading process, rather than a genre, and applies this definition to Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis to demonstrate that a pornographic reading of the poem provides insight about the place of sexual pleasure within the sixteenth-century moral order. By replacing the modern distinction between “erotic” and “aesthetic” feelings with a sixteenth-century-appropriate distinction between antisocial lust and prosocial love, this essay argues that Venus and Adonis provides a fantasy of sex without consequences that readers can enjoy while remaining true to their religious, social, and familial responsibilities.