On "Vulgar Exhibition": Hazlitt, "The Fight" and the Pornography of Popularity

Abstract

This essay pursues Hazlitt as a case in Cultural Studies historiography by reading his 1822 essay "The Fight" as a contribution to the historical emergence of the discourse of "popular culture" as a class-inflected euphemism for pornography. This approach also addresses the popular cultural preoccupations of contemporary criticism on the essay.