Literary Obscenities

Literary Obscenities: U. S. Case Law and Naturalism after Modernism, Volume 1, is a comparative historical study examining the intersection of U.S. obscenity laws and literary movements in the early twentieth century. This work of English literature history and criticism analyzes how legal trials and the suppression of vulgar writing influenced debates regarding the power of the printed word. Erik Bachman explores the relationship between the crisis of legitimation in case law and the crisis of representation in modernism.

The text focuses on authors like Wyndham Lewis and Lillian Smith to show how naturalism in literature refigured the obscene to highlight social processes and mass consumption. By analyzing pornography in literature and legal history, the book examines how language affects human bodies and identities. This scholarly analysis of obscenity law and 20th century criticism provides a new framework for understanding the social forces shaping American literature.