> *** Roman floor mosaics were probably for fertility... Whatever such
> images
> were about, it wasn't pornographic in anything but the most banal and
> generic sense. Certainly not part of the pornographic genre.
I'm not an archeologist, anthropologist, or historian, just a skeptical lay person. But as a skeptic, I think that this "fertility" explanation for ancient cultural phenomena may be just a wee bit overworked. (See Wittgenstein's "Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough" in his _Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951_ for some philosophical arguments.) You say "probably for fertility," but what is this inference of probability based on? The archeologists dig up pictures of various groupings of people engaged in all manner of sexual activities (*all* manner -- not just straight intercourse) on the floors and walls of bathhouses and private residences, and promptly proclaim them "for fertility." "Pornographic -- heavens to Betsy, no! Those noble Romans had very clean minds! It was all just pagan religion." They may be right, but pardon me, I'm from Missouri. (Actually from Indiana, but that's close enough.)
One could also state flatly that the medieval inquisitors were just engaged in a "religious" activity. Their witch-hunting manuals, with their tales of sex with Satan, were not pornographic. Oh no! And what they did in their dungeons when they caught their witches wasn't sadistic behavior. Couldn't have been -- sadism, as we all know, was invented by Sade in the 18th century!
> *** You're missing the point. Hunt's position isn't that people didn't
> get
> off before Sade, but that pornography as a kind of autonomous "form" of
> writing / depiction didn't exist until rather recently. It certainly
> wasn't
> consumed the same way until men had private space and leisure time in
> addition to secularisation of sex.
Sorry, but I just don't buy it. I happen to believe (naturally, I have no "empirical evidence" for it) that people started to tell dirty jokes approximately six weeks after they invented language, drew dirty pictures as soon as they learned how to draw, and wrote pornographic literature as soon as they invented writing.
Look, there is a pretty large remaining corpus of Latin and Greek pornography, obviously having nothing to do with religious beliefs about "fertility," even after the Christians went through all the libraries and destroyed probably the greater part of it. If there were any ancient beliefs that drawing salacious pictures would promote fertility in crops, animals, or humans, I doubt that they were really taken very seriously by the time of the Empire.
> *** Does that exclude anything? That kind of definition is fine for
> Merriam-Webster, and perhaps the author of the next bestselling
> anthology of
> erotic whatever.... but it really lacks a degree of discrimination. No
> doubt
> the Song of Songs is pornographic according to this definition, but so
> is
> every single other fertility ritual ever performed or written about.
Well, I don't think that inference is valid. The key term, of course, in this definition is "intended." But intentions are pretty tricky. Were the inquisitors' manuals "intended" to cause sexual excitement? On one level, I suppose not. Those guys sincerely believed that they were engaged in the holy work of saving souls from Satan. But I don't think we have to be that naive today. I happen to believe that religion -- whatever religion you are taking about -- is not a "holy, pure" activity completely divorced from sex. But you may have a different belief.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ Belinda: Ay, but you know we must return good for evil. Lady Brute: That may be a mistake in the translation.
-- Sir John Vanbrugh: The Provok’d Wife (1697), I.i.