Read Anywhere and on Any Device!

Subscribe to Read | $0.00

Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!

Create Free Account

Figures of Ill Repute: Representing Prostitution in Nineteenth-Century France

Charles Bernheimer

3.9/5 ( ratings)

Ubiquitous in the streets and brothels of nineteenth-century Paris, the prostitute was even more so in the novels and paintings of the time. Charles Bernheimer discusses how these representations of the sexually available woman express male ambivalence about desire, money, class, and the body. Interweaving close textual analysis with historical anecdote and theoretical speculation, Bernheimer demonstrates how the formal properties of art can serve strategically to control anxious fantasies about female sexual power. Drawing on methods derived from cultural studies, psychoanalysis, social history, feminist theory, and narrative analysis, this interdisciplinary classic was awarded Honorable Mention in 1990 for the James Russell Lowell prize awarded by the Modern Language Association for the best book of criticism.

Language: English

Pages: 352

Format: Paperback

Publisher: Duke University Press Books

Release: May 22, 1997

ISBN: 0822319470

ISBN 13: 9780822319474

Figures of Ill Repute: Representing Prostitution in Nineteenth-Century France

Charles Bernheimer

3.9/5 ( ratings)

Ubiquitous in the streets and brothels of nineteenth-century Paris, the prostitute was even more so in the novels and paintings of the time. Charles Bernheimer discusses how these representations of the sexually available woman express male ambivalence about desire, money, class, and the body. Interweaving close textual analysis with historical anecdote and theoretical speculation, Bernheimer demonstrates how the formal properties of art can serve strategically to control anxious fantasies about female sexual power. Drawing on methods derived from cultural studies, psychoanalysis, social history, feminist theory, and narrative analysis, this interdisciplinary classic was awarded Honorable Mention in 1990 for the James Russell Lowell prize awarded by the Modern Language Association for the best book of criticism.

Language: English

Pages: 352

Format: Paperback

Publisher: Duke University Press Books

Release: May 22, 1997

ISBN: 0822319470

ISBN 13: 9780822319474

More books from Charles Bernheimer

Comparative Literature in the Age of Multiculturalism

3.2/5 ( ratings)

In Dora's Case: Freud, Hysteria, Feminism

3.3/5 ( ratings)

Decadent Subjects: The Idea of Decadence in Art, Literature, Philosophy, and Culture of the Fin de Siècle in Europe

4.1/5 ( ratings)

Flaubert and Kafka: Studies in Psychopoetic Structure

Niewspółmierność. Perspektywy nowoczesnej komparatystyki. Antologia

Rate this book!

Write a review?