SEXUAL IMAGES AND SELLING SEX

EROTIC REPRESENTATIONS IN HISTORY
• By the dawn of the great ancient civilizations such as Egypt,
people were drawing erotic images on walls or pieces of papyrus
just for the sake of eroticism.
• Greece is famous for the erotic art that adorned objects like bowls
and urns.
The Invention of Pornography
• Pornography, which tends to portray sexuality for its own sake, did
not emerge as a distinct category until the middle of the 18th
century.
• Obscenity was illegal among the Puritans because it was an
offense against God.
• Historians of pornography trace the modern pornographic novel
back to Renaissance Italian writer Pietro Aretino (1492-1556).
• The story of pornography is not just about publishing erotic
material but also about the struggle between those who try to
create it and those who try to stop them.
• The term erotica is often used to refer to sexual
representations that are not pornographic, but it means only
that it is considered by a viewer or society as within the
acceptable bounds of decency.