Literary notes about indecent (AI summary)
In literature, the term "indecent" serves as a versatile marker for behavior, language, and imagery that break away from accepted social, moral, or aesthetic norms. Authors employ it to criticize crude humor or behavior—as seen when a jest is labeled coarse and morally offensive [1]—and to highlight actions deemed scandalous or unseemly, such as the portrayal of nakedness or explicit discourse [2][3]. At other times, the word underscores disapproval of refined manners when ordinary customs are rendered offensive by their excessive informality or impropriety [4][5]. In various contexts, "indecent" not only conveys moral judgment but also challenges the boundaries between acceptable public expression and taboo, providing a critical commentary on social conventions [6][7].
- 104 There are, generally speaking, two sorts of jest: the one, coarse, rude, vicious, indecent; the other, refined, polite, clever, witty.
— from De Officiis by Marcus Tullius Cicero - [188] whom they distinguished from the rest by stripping him stark naked, and executing him in that indecent manner.
— from Fox's Book of Martyrs by John Foxe - “There, sir, is your place of punishment, stoop and kiss it before I imprison your indecent cock within it.”
— from The Romance of Lust: A classic Victorian erotic novel by Anonymous - There come moods when these clothes of ours are not only too irksome to wear, but are themselves indecent.
— from Complete Prose Works by Walt Whitman - It is your thought, your sophistication, your tear, your respectability, that is indecent.
— from Complete Prose Works by Walt Whitman - A similar trick which passes for a slip of the tongue is that which transforms a harmless word into one which is indecent and obscene.
— from A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud - Of course, the sexual is the indecent, which we must not talk about.
— from A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
