This book marks a radical and powerful intervention in traditional arguments about pornography. Kappeler re-examines the artistic distinctions between fantasy and reality, pornography and erotica, and challenges the legal definition of obscenity as well as the intellectual defence of 'freedom of expression'. By linking images of actual violence with the imaginative portrayal of women in the realm of the aesthetic, she establishes vital connections between modes of representation and social forms of power and domination.

It is essential reading for anyone concerned with issues of pornography and sexual politics and related debates in literary criticism and cultural studies.

Susanne Kappeler Lecturer in English at the University of East Anglia and works as a freelance writer and teacher in both England and Germany. She authored Reading and Writing in Henry James and was also co-editor of Teaching the Text.