Nicholas Harrison
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198159094
- eISBN:
- 9780191673481
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198159094.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
The French Revolution of 1789 bequeathed an enduring rhetoric of human rights which made it conventional to declare oneself against censorship and in favour of freedom of expression. But, as this ...
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The French Revolution of 1789 bequeathed an enduring rhetoric of human rights which made it conventional to declare oneself against censorship and in favour of freedom of expression. But, as this book demonstrates, the apparent consensus on this issue in modern France and elsewhere rests on a shaky sense of that rhetoric's history. And, while censors have continued to the present day to charge clumsily across delicate moral and political fields, opponents of literary censorship, in particular, have frequently displayed excessive respect for censored material, mistakenly assuming that the censor can be relied upon to identify material that is disturbing, subversive, or true. This book focuses on key episodes in the history of literary censorship in France. It examines the Madame Bovary trial of 1857, and the prosecution a century later of Pauvert, publisher of Sade's complete works. It analyses and criticizes the Freudian-influenced attempts by the Surrealist movement and by Barthes and the Tel Quel group to subvert and evade censorship. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines and approaches including history, literary theory and feminism, the book presents a critique of the ideas on censorship which resurfaced repeatedly in the discourse of human rights, psychoanalysis and literary culture.Less
The French Revolution of 1789 bequeathed an enduring rhetoric of human rights which made it conventional to declare oneself against censorship and in favour of freedom of expression. But, as this book demonstrates, the apparent consensus on this issue in modern France and elsewhere rests on a shaky sense of that rhetoric's history. And, while censors have continued to the present day to charge clumsily across delicate moral and political fields, opponents of literary censorship, in particular, have frequently displayed excessive respect for censored material, mistakenly assuming that the censor can be relied upon to identify material that is disturbing, subversive, or true. This book focuses on key episodes in the history of literary censorship in France. It examines the Madame Bovary trial of 1857, and the prosecution a century later of Pauvert, publisher of Sade's complete works. It analyses and criticizes the Freudian-influenced attempts by the Surrealist movement and by Barthes and the Tel Quel group to subvert and evade censorship. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines and approaches including history, literary theory and feminism, the book presents a critique of the ideas on censorship which resurfaced repeatedly in the discourse of human rights, psychoanalysis and literary culture.
Nora Gilbert
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804784207
- eISBN:
- 9780804784870
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804784207.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This book is in the unseemly position of defending censorship from the central allegations that are traditionally leveled against it. Taking two genres generally presumed to have been stymied by the ...
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This book is in the unseemly position of defending censorship from the central allegations that are traditionally leveled against it. Taking two genres generally presumed to have been stymied by the censor's knife—the Victorian novel and classical Hollywood film—it reveals the varied ways in which censorship, for all its blustery self-righteousness, can actually be good for sex, politics, feminism, and art. As much as Victorianism is equated with such cultural impulses as repression and prudery, few scholars have explored the Victorian novel as a “censored” commodity—thanks, in large part, to the indirectness and intangibility of England's literary censorship process. This indirection stands in sharp contrast to the explicit, detailed formality of Hollywood's infamous Production Code of 1930. In comparing these two versions of censorship, the author explores the paradoxical effects of prohibitive practices. Rather than being ruined by censorship, Victorian novels and Hays Code films were stirred and stimulated by the very forces meant to restrain them.Less
This book is in the unseemly position of defending censorship from the central allegations that are traditionally leveled against it. Taking two genres generally presumed to have been stymied by the censor's knife—the Victorian novel and classical Hollywood film—it reveals the varied ways in which censorship, for all its blustery self-righteousness, can actually be good for sex, politics, feminism, and art. As much as Victorianism is equated with such cultural impulses as repression and prudery, few scholars have explored the Victorian novel as a “censored” commodity—thanks, in large part, to the indirectness and intangibility of England's literary censorship process. This indirection stands in sharp contrast to the explicit, detailed formality of Hollywood's infamous Production Code of 1930. In comparing these two versions of censorship, the author explores the paradoxical effects of prohibitive practices. Rather than being ruined by censorship, Victorian novels and Hays Code films were stirred and stimulated by the very forces meant to restrain them.
Ramona Naddaff
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780823283712
- eISBN:
- 9780823286164
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823283712.003.0015
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
From the very first moments of his publication, Sade was deemed a dangerous writer who deliberately intended to harm his audience and from whom the general public should be protected. In the 1958 ...
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From the very first moments of his publication, Sade was deemed a dangerous writer who deliberately intended to harm his audience and from whom the general public should be protected. In the 1958 literary censorship trial, "The Public Ministry vs. Jean-Jacques Pauvert," the Marquis de Sade's twentieth-century publisher contested the state's reading of Sade's texts as "contrary to good morals." Sade's defense team offered provocative and, at times, innovative interpretations of his work and legacy that addressed the history of its reception and interpretations of its ethical and didactic value. The defense, paradoxically, emphasized that the very price, design, and marketing of Sade's work already restricted its readership to only those capable of comprehending Sade's philosophy of pure destruction-namely, to the elite, be they scholars or not. Finally, to assure Sade's work freedom of circulation, the defense's team of expert witnesses demanded that Sade's literature not be distinguished from pornography, as is typical in literary censorship trials, but from philosophy.Less
From the very first moments of his publication, Sade was deemed a dangerous writer who deliberately intended to harm his audience and from whom the general public should be protected. In the 1958 literary censorship trial, "The Public Ministry vs. Jean-Jacques Pauvert," the Marquis de Sade's twentieth-century publisher contested the state's reading of Sade's texts as "contrary to good morals." Sade's defense team offered provocative and, at times, innovative interpretations of his work and legacy that addressed the history of its reception and interpretations of its ethical and didactic value. The defense, paradoxically, emphasized that the very price, design, and marketing of Sade's work already restricted its readership to only those capable of comprehending Sade's philosophy of pure destruction-namely, to the elite, be they scholars or not. Finally, to assure Sade's work freedom of circulation, the defense's team of expert witnesses demanded that Sade's literature not be distinguished from pornography, as is typical in literary censorship trials, but from philosophy.
Rachel Potter
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199680986
- eISBN:
- 9780191766008
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199680986.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
The Conclusion summarizes the main arguments of the book and briefly sketches a subsequent history of literary censorship and literary exploration of the obscene, partly by focusing on Vladimir ...
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The Conclusion summarizes the main arguments of the book and briefly sketches a subsequent history of literary censorship and literary exploration of the obscene, partly by focusing on Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, which was prohibited from circulation in the US and UK, published in Paris, and which importantly explored the aesthetic pleasures of the obscene in the 1950s.Less
The Conclusion summarizes the main arguments of the book and briefly sketches a subsequent history of literary censorship and literary exploration of the obscene, partly by focusing on Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, which was prohibited from circulation in the US and UK, published in Paris, and which importantly explored the aesthetic pleasures of the obscene in the 1950s.
Josh Lambert
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479876433
- eISBN:
- 9781479851584
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479876433.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
Jews have played an integral role in the history of obscenity in America. For most of the 20th century, Jewish entrepreneurs and editors led the charge against obscenity laws. Jewish lawyers battled ...
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Jews have played an integral role in the history of obscenity in America. For most of the 20th century, Jewish entrepreneurs and editors led the charge against obscenity laws. Jewish lawyers battled literary censorship even when their non-Jewish counterparts refused to do so, and they won court decisions in favor of texts including Ulysses, A Howl, Lady Chatterley's Lover, and Tropic of Cancer. Jewish literary critics have provided some of the most influential courtroom testimony on behalf of freedom of expression. The anti-Semitic stereotype of the lascivious Jew has made many historians hesitant to draw a direct link between Jewishness and obscenity. This book addresses the Jewishness of participants in obscenity controversies in the U.S. directly, exploring the transformative roles played by a host of neglected figures in the development of modern and postmodern American culture. The diversity of American Jewry means that there is no single explanation for Jews'interventions in this field. Rejecting generalizations, the book offers case studies that pair cultural histories with close readings of both contested texts and trial transcripts to reveal the ways in which specific engagements with obscenity mattered to particular American Jews at discrete historical moments.Less
Jews have played an integral role in the history of obscenity in America. For most of the 20th century, Jewish entrepreneurs and editors led the charge against obscenity laws. Jewish lawyers battled literary censorship even when their non-Jewish counterparts refused to do so, and they won court decisions in favor of texts including Ulysses, A Howl, Lady Chatterley's Lover, and Tropic of Cancer. Jewish literary critics have provided some of the most influential courtroom testimony on behalf of freedom of expression. The anti-Semitic stereotype of the lascivious Jew has made many historians hesitant to draw a direct link between Jewishness and obscenity. This book addresses the Jewishness of participants in obscenity controversies in the U.S. directly, exploring the transformative roles played by a host of neglected figures in the development of modern and postmodern American culture. The diversity of American Jewry means that there is no single explanation for Jews'interventions in this field. Rejecting generalizations, the book offers case studies that pair cultural histories with close readings of both contested texts and trial transcripts to reveal the ways in which specific engagements with obscenity mattered to particular American Jews at discrete historical moments.
David Seed
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252038945
- eISBN:
- 9780252096907
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252038945.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This chapter discusses Ray Bradbury's writings on Mars, with a particular focus on The Martian Chronicles (1950). It covers his discovery of Edgar Rice Burroughs' fiction at the age of ten; his early ...
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This chapter discusses Ray Bradbury's writings on Mars, with a particular focus on The Martian Chronicles (1950). It covers his discovery of Edgar Rice Burroughs' fiction at the age of ten; his early Mars stories; his composition of The Martian Chronicles; his efforts to move away from clichéd images of extraterrestrials; his emphasis on a seepage between the consciousnesses of his Earthlings and Martians; how the Martians in his stories emerge as projections or distorted mirror images of the human settlers; his emphasis of the importance of dwellings in The Martian Chronicles; and his later Mars publications. The final section of the chapter discusses how the Martian story “Usher II” engages most directly with the enforcement of literary censorship.Less
This chapter discusses Ray Bradbury's writings on Mars, with a particular focus on The Martian Chronicles (1950). It covers his discovery of Edgar Rice Burroughs' fiction at the age of ten; his early Mars stories; his composition of The Martian Chronicles; his efforts to move away from clichéd images of extraterrestrials; his emphasis on a seepage between the consciousnesses of his Earthlings and Martians; how the Martians in his stories emerge as projections or distorted mirror images of the human settlers; his emphasis of the importance of dwellings in The Martian Chronicles; and his later Mars publications. The final section of the chapter discusses how the Martian story “Usher II” engages most directly with the enforcement of literary censorship.
