Venal Bodies: Prostitution in Eighteenth-Century Culture
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External
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Co-organised by Dr. Ann Lewis (Department of European Cultures & Languages, Birkbeck, University of London) & Prof. Markman Ellis (School of English and Drama, Queen Mary, University of London) with the support of the Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies and School of English and Drama, Queen Mary University of London; and the Faculty of Arts and School of Languages, Linguistics and Culture, Birkbeck, University of London.
Prostitutes, and prostitution, were notoriously visible in eighteenth-century culture, a visibility that was amply reflected in political and cultural discourses. The period witnessed important transformations in the representation of prostitution, offering contrasting accounts of the prostitute as a criminal agent of corruption or as a subject of social violence. Commonly understood as an index of the moral temperature of society, the perceived increase in prostitution in the major cities of Europe invited diverse interpretations and responses. Prostitutes in eighteenth-century texts and images mediated a range of central Enlightenment arguments and anxieties relating to sex, love, marriage and the family, concerns about disease and depopulation, luxury and social displacement, and the phenomenon of urbanisation. As a visible sign of the sexualised female body, the prostitute was also a point of convergence for debates on the feminisation of culture.
Contact name:
Ann Lewis