TY - BOOK AU - Leonard,Sarah L. TI - Fragile Minds and Vulnerable Souls: The Matter of Obscenity in Nineteenth-Century Germany T2 - Material Texts SN - 9780812246704 AV - HQ472.G3 L46 2015 U1 - 363.4/7094309034 23 PY - 2014///] CY - Philadelphia : PB - University of Pennsylvania Press, KW - Books and reading KW - Germany KW - History KW - 19th century KW - Censorship KW - Erotic literature KW - History and criticism KW - Appreciation KW - Literature and society KW - Obscenity (Law) KW - Pornography KW - Self KW - Sex (Psychology) KW - Underground literature KW - Cultural Studies KW - LITERARY CRITICISM / European / German KW - bisacsh KW - Literature N1 - Frontmatter --; Contents --; Introduction: The Cultivation of Inner Life and the Dangers of Reading --; Chapter 1. Inventing Fragile Readers --; Chapter 2. Dubious Sources, Dangerous Spaces, Porous Geographies --; Chapter 3. Defending Forbidden Texts --; Chapter 4. Liberalism and the Codification of Obscenity Laws in the 1830s and 1840s --; Chapter 5. Redefining Obscenity in an Era of "Progress," 1848-1880 --; Conclusion --; Notes --; Bibliography --; Index --; Acknowledgments; restricted access; Issued also in print N2 - Fragile Minds and Vulnerable Souls investigates the creation of "obscene writings and images" as a category of print in nineteenth-century Germany. Sarah L. Leonard charts the process through which texts of many kinds-from popular medical works to stereoscope cards-were deemed dangerous to the intellectual and emotional lives of vulnerable consumers. She shows that these definitions often hinged as much on the content of texts as on their perceived capacity to distort the intellect and inflame the imagination.Leonard tracks the legal and mercantile channels through which sexually explicit material traveled as Prussian expansion opened new routes for the movement of culture and ideas. Official conceptions of obscenity were forged through a heterogeneous body of laws, police ordinances, and expert commentary. Many texts acquired the stigma of immorality because they served nonelite readers and passed through suspect spaces; books and pamphlets sold by peddlers or borrowed from fly-by-night lending libraries were deemed particularly dangerous. Early on, teachers and theologians warned against the effects of these materials on the mind and soul; in the latter half of the century, as the study of inner life was increasingly medicalized, physicians became the leading experts on the detrimental side effects of the obscene. In Fragile Minds and Vulnerable Souls, Leonard shows how distinctly German legal and medical traditions of theorizing obscenity gave rise to a new understanding about the mind and soul that endured into the next century UR - https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812291780 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9780812291780 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/cover/covers/9780812291780.jpg ER -