Kenneth Dover
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199245475
- eISBN:
- 9780191714993
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199245475.003.0004
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter establishes the range of evaluative strategies found in Greek comedy and then concentrates on an explicit lexical evaluation in comedy. It argues that it would be easy to understand why ...
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This chapter establishes the range of evaluative strategies found in Greek comedy and then concentrates on an explicit lexical evaluation in comedy. It argues that it would be easy to understand why the language of Aristophanes abstains from the use of the ‘basic’ obscene metaphor in reproaching stupidity and unpleasantness if it also abstained from (1) the metaphorical use of ‘deviant’ obscenity and (2) the use of both basic and deviant obscene words in their literal meanings. However, those conditions are not fulfilled, leaving something that resembles an ecological niche inexplicably unoccupied.Less
This chapter establishes the range of evaluative strategies found in Greek comedy and then concentrates on an explicit lexical evaluation in comedy. It argues that it would be easy to understand why the language of Aristophanes abstains from the use of the ‘basic’ obscene metaphor in reproaching stupidity and unpleasantness if it also abstained from (1) the metaphorical use of ‘deviant’ obscenity and (2) the use of both basic and deviant obscene words in their literal meanings. However, those conditions are not fulfilled, leaving something that resembles an ecological niche inexplicably unoccupied.
Susan G. Davis
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252042614
- eISBN:
- 9780252051456
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042614.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Gender and Sexuality
Born into a poor Jewish family, folklorist Gershon Legman (1917-99) made an independent career for himself in the study of erotic literature and obscene folklore. The book is the first full biography ...
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Born into a poor Jewish family, folklorist Gershon Legman (1917-99) made an independent career for himself in the study of erotic literature and obscene folklore. The book is the first full biography of this major figure in twentieth-century folklore study. Drawing on unprecedented research in Legman’s papers, the author traces his working and personal life from the 1930s American landscape of underground publishing, through midcentury sex research, through to his recovery and publication, in the 1960 and 1970s, of suppressed and censored folklore texts. Gershon Legman expanded the study of folklore in a series of authoritative works on topics ranging from limericks, folk songs, and jokes to the history of erotica publishing. Legman’s work prefigured the history of sexuality and the body, while he used the language of folklore to create a romantic outsider’s vision of American culture freed from repression.
The book places Legman in the censorship battles of his times, connecting him to other important thinkers on sex and to the expansion of folklore as an academic discipline in the twentieth century. As it weighs the effect of Legman’s long exile in France, the book describes the twentieth century’s narrowing intellectual space for marginal, contrarian thinkers.Less
Born into a poor Jewish family, folklorist Gershon Legman (1917-99) made an independent career for himself in the study of erotic literature and obscene folklore. The book is the first full biography of this major figure in twentieth-century folklore study. Drawing on unprecedented research in Legman’s papers, the author traces his working and personal life from the 1930s American landscape of underground publishing, through midcentury sex research, through to his recovery and publication, in the 1960 and 1970s, of suppressed and censored folklore texts. Gershon Legman expanded the study of folklore in a series of authoritative works on topics ranging from limericks, folk songs, and jokes to the history of erotica publishing. Legman’s work prefigured the history of sexuality and the body, while he used the language of folklore to create a romantic outsider’s vision of American culture freed from repression.
The book places Legman in the censorship battles of his times, connecting him to other important thinkers on sex and to the expansion of folklore as an academic discipline in the twentieth century. As it weighs the effect of Legman’s long exile in France, the book describes the twentieth century’s narrowing intellectual space for marginal, contrarian thinkers.
Deborah H. Roberts
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199288076
- eISBN:
- 9780191713439
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199288076.003.0014
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter is concerned with the translation into English (chiefly between 1800 and 1950) of obscene or erotic elements in classical texts. Cultures vary widely in their construction of sexual and ...
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This chapter is concerned with the translation into English (chiefly between 1800 and 1950) of obscene or erotic elements in classical texts. Cultures vary widely in their construction of sexual and excremental behavior, and in the acceptable context of usage and emotional register associated with sexual and excremental language. Where the target culture considers such language obscene and therefore taboo, the translatability of the text may be called into question; the presence of obscenity in a work that is considered a classic poses particular problems given the presumed status of the text as elite and of public value, and an understanding of obscenity as vulgar or suitable for private consumption. This chapter investigates the complexity and diversity of responses to obscenity in expurgated and unexpurgated versions of several ancient authors and genres, identifying in the varieties of both euphemism and directness a commitment to the special standing of the text.Less
This chapter is concerned with the translation into English (chiefly between 1800 and 1950) of obscene or erotic elements in classical texts. Cultures vary widely in their construction of sexual and excremental behavior, and in the acceptable context of usage and emotional register associated with sexual and excremental language. Where the target culture considers such language obscene and therefore taboo, the translatability of the text may be called into question; the presence of obscenity in a work that is considered a classic poses particular problems given the presumed status of the text as elite and of public value, and an understanding of obscenity as vulgar or suitable for private consumption. This chapter investigates the complexity and diversity of responses to obscenity in expurgated and unexpurgated versions of several ancient authors and genres, identifying in the varieties of both euphemism and directness a commitment to the special standing of the text.
Alan H. Sommerstein
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199554195
- eISBN:
- 9780191720604
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199554195.003.0013
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Plays and Playwrights: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter explores the ways in which women, in Aristophanes' Lysistrata and Ecclesiazusae, use nudity, obscene language, and obscene gesture to assert their independence of, and power over, men. ...
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This chapter explores the ways in which women, in Aristophanes' Lysistrata and Ecclesiazusae, use nudity, obscene language, and obscene gesture to assert their independence of, and power over, men. The women's chorus in Lysistrata are ‘stage-naked’ for some 300 lines; earlier in the play, other women had pointedly used obscene words and gestures; and later, the mute nude Reconciliation, unlike every other Aristophanic figure of her kind, is used to exercise control over men, offering to take them by the penis not to pleasure them but to drag them to the peace table. There is a series of similar phenomena in Ecclesiazusae too, culminating in an apparent nude dancing duet by two young women who must logically be, and be seen to be, of citizen status.Less
This chapter explores the ways in which women, in Aristophanes' Lysistrata and Ecclesiazusae, use nudity, obscene language, and obscene gesture to assert their independence of, and power over, men. The women's chorus in Lysistrata are ‘stage-naked’ for some 300 lines; earlier in the play, other women had pointedly used obscene words and gestures; and later, the mute nude Reconciliation, unlike every other Aristophanic figure of her kind, is used to exercise control over men, offering to take them by the penis not to pleasure them but to drag them to the peace table. There is a series of similar phenomena in Ecclesiazusae too, culminating in an apparent nude dancing duet by two young women who must logically be, and be seen to be, of citizen status.
Paul Baines and Pat Rogers
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199278985
- eISBN:
- 9780191700002
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278985.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
Edmund Curll was a notorious figure among the publishers of the early eighteenth century: for his boldness, his lack of scruple, his publication of work without authors' consent, and his taste for ...
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Edmund Curll was a notorious figure among the publishers of the early eighteenth century: for his boldness, his lack of scruple, his publication of work without authors' consent, and his taste for erotic and scandalous publications. He was in legal trouble on several occasions for piracy and copyright infringement, unauthorised publication of the works of peers, and for seditious, blasphemous, and obscene publications. He stood in the pillory in 1728 for seditious libel. Above all, he was the constant target of the greatest poet and satirist of his age, Alexander Pope, whose work he pirated whenever he could and who responded with direct physical revenge (an emetic slipped into a drink) and persistent malign caricature. The war between Pope and Curll typifies some of the main cultural battles being waged between creativity and business. The story has normally been told from the poet's point of view, though more recently Curll has been celebrated as a kind of literary freedom-fighter. This book seeks to give a balanced and thoroughly-researched account of Curll's career in publishing between 1706 and 1747, untangling the mistakes and misrepresentations that have accrued over the years and restoring a clear sense of perspective to Curll's dealings in the literary marketplace. It examines the full range of Curll's output, including his notable antiquarian series, and uses extensive archive material to detail Curll's legal and other troubles, telling what is known about this strange and awkward figure.Less
Edmund Curll was a notorious figure among the publishers of the early eighteenth century: for his boldness, his lack of scruple, his publication of work without authors' consent, and his taste for erotic and scandalous publications. He was in legal trouble on several occasions for piracy and copyright infringement, unauthorised publication of the works of peers, and for seditious, blasphemous, and obscene publications. He stood in the pillory in 1728 for seditious libel. Above all, he was the constant target of the greatest poet and satirist of his age, Alexander Pope, whose work he pirated whenever he could and who responded with direct physical revenge (an emetic slipped into a drink) and persistent malign caricature. The war between Pope and Curll typifies some of the main cultural battles being waged between creativity and business. The story has normally been told from the poet's point of view, though more recently Curll has been celebrated as a kind of literary freedom-fighter. This book seeks to give a balanced and thoroughly-researched account of Curll's career in publishing between 1706 and 1747, untangling the mistakes and misrepresentations that have accrued over the years and restoring a clear sense of perspective to Curll's dealings in the literary marketplace. It examines the full range of Curll's output, including his notable antiquarian series, and uses extensive archive material to detail Curll's legal and other troubles, telling what is known about this strange and awkward figure.
Joel Feinberg
- Published in print:
- 1988
- Published Online:
- February 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780195052152
- eISBN:
- 9780199785872
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195052153.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy
This book is the second in a four-volume work entitled The Moral Limits of Criminal Law, which examines the acts that the state may make criminal. It focuses on the issue of offense, presenting a ...
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This book is the second in a four-volume work entitled The Moral Limits of Criminal Law, which examines the acts that the state may make criminal. It focuses on the issue of offense, presenting a detailed analysis of offensive behavior and how it is more a nuisance than a menace. It identifies the different kinds of offenses and the standards for evaluating their seriousness. The issue of obscenity is analyzed within the context of pornography and the Constitution. Obscene words, their functions, and social and legal implications are also discussed.Less
This book is the second in a four-volume work entitled The Moral Limits of Criminal Law, which examines the acts that the state may make criminal. It focuses on the issue of offense, presenting a detailed analysis of offensive behavior and how it is more a nuisance than a menace. It identifies the different kinds of offenses and the standards for evaluating their seriousness. The issue of obscenity is analyzed within the context of pornography and the Constitution. Obscene words, their functions, and social and legal implications are also discussed.
Joel Feinberg
- Published in print:
- 1988
- Published Online:
- February 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780195052152
- eISBN:
- 9780199785872
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195052153.003.0010
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy
A wholesale ban on uttering or writing obscene words cannot be justified even by the principle of legal moralism. Moreover, the offense principle cannot justify the criminal prohibition of the ...
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A wholesale ban on uttering or writing obscene words cannot be justified even by the principle of legal moralism. Moreover, the offense principle cannot justify the criminal prohibition of the utterance of obscenities in public places even when these are intentionally used to cause offense. The use of obscene words can only be made criminal when it is an unjustified, deliberately imposed nuisance. This form of nuisance is a kind of harassment, and the fact that it employs obscene words is by no means essential to its moral gravamen. Obscenity in the media is discussed.Less
A wholesale ban on uttering or writing obscene words cannot be justified even by the principle of legal moralism. Moreover, the offense principle cannot justify the criminal prohibition of the utterance of obscenities in public places even when these are intentionally used to cause offense. The use of obscene words can only be made criminal when it is an unjustified, deliberately imposed nuisance. This form of nuisance is a kind of harassment, and the fact that it employs obscene words is by no means essential to its moral gravamen. Obscenity in the media is discussed.
April R. Haynes
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226284590
- eISBN:
- 9780226284767
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226284767.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
“A Philosophy of Amative Indulgence” analyzes the 1846 obscenity prosecution of Frederick Hollick as a case study in the spread of solitary vice discourse into mainstream popular culture. As moral ...
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“A Philosophy of Amative Indulgence” analyzes the 1846 obscenity prosecution of Frederick Hollick as a case study in the spread of solitary vice discourse into mainstream popular culture. As moral guardianship eclipsed political radicalism, reform physiology became less controversial and more commercial. Secular and entrepreneurial lecturers addressed women, men, and youth of both sexes on sexual physiology. Hollick, unlike Sylvester Graham, championed sexual pleasure for its own sake. Before sexologists coined the term “heterosexuality,” he naturalized pleasure between the sexes for reasons other than procreation. Hollick’s “philosophy of amative indulgence” endorsed women’s orgasmic pleasure in marital intercourse and named the solitary vice as the opposite of healthy pleasure. When critics labeled such advice obscene, he insisted that his antimasturbation lectures saved lives. White reformers, especially those like Mary Grew who supported women’s rights, defended Hollick against obscenity charges and redefined virtue as the ability to moderately indulge, rather than radically restrain, sexual impulses. Popular physiology lectures simultaneously naturalized heterosexual desire in women and whitened the normative expressions of that desire. Anatomical texts represented black female bodies as prone to nymphomania. White abolitionist women who read and endorsed them excluded African American women from their definition of sexual citizenship.Less
“A Philosophy of Amative Indulgence” analyzes the 1846 obscenity prosecution of Frederick Hollick as a case study in the spread of solitary vice discourse into mainstream popular culture. As moral guardianship eclipsed political radicalism, reform physiology became less controversial and more commercial. Secular and entrepreneurial lecturers addressed women, men, and youth of both sexes on sexual physiology. Hollick, unlike Sylvester Graham, championed sexual pleasure for its own sake. Before sexologists coined the term “heterosexuality,” he naturalized pleasure between the sexes for reasons other than procreation. Hollick’s “philosophy of amative indulgence” endorsed women’s orgasmic pleasure in marital intercourse and named the solitary vice as the opposite of healthy pleasure. When critics labeled such advice obscene, he insisted that his antimasturbation lectures saved lives. White reformers, especially those like Mary Grew who supported women’s rights, defended Hollick against obscenity charges and redefined virtue as the ability to moderately indulge, rather than radically restrain, sexual impulses. Popular physiology lectures simultaneously naturalized heterosexual desire in women and whitened the normative expressions of that desire. Anatomical texts represented black female bodies as prone to nymphomania. White abolitionist women who read and endorsed them excluded African American women from their definition of sexual citizenship.
Joel Feinberg
- Published in print:
- 1988
- Published Online:
- February 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780195052152
- eISBN:
- 9780199785872
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195052153.003.0007
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy
Obscene words have the capacity to offend and shock listeners, and in some cases even fill with dread and horror. The class of words that are either obscene, totally disreputable, or naughty enough ...
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Obscene words have the capacity to offend and shock listeners, and in some cases even fill with dread and horror. The class of words that are either obscene, totally disreputable, or naughty enough to be forbidden, is diverse and heterogeneous. These include sexual vulgarities, other “dirty words”, political labels, ethnic slurs, insulting terms, and religious blasphemies. Obscene-to-naughty words and phrases can be classified into two main categories: profanities and vulgarities. Derivative uses of obscenity are discussed.Less
Obscene words have the capacity to offend and shock listeners, and in some cases even fill with dread and horror. The class of words that are either obscene, totally disreputable, or naughty enough to be forbidden, is diverse and heterogeneous. These include sexual vulgarities, other “dirty words”, political labels, ethnic slurs, insulting terms, and religious blasphemies. Obscene-to-naughty words and phrases can be classified into two main categories: profanities and vulgarities. Derivative uses of obscenity are discussed.
Joel Feinberg
- Published in print:
- 1988
- Published Online:
- February 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780195052152
- eISBN:
- 9780199785872
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195052153.003.0008
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy
Invective has various uses including expressive intensification, bandinage, calumny, insult, challenge, and provocation. For many of these uses, obscene words can advance the purposes of the speaker, ...
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Invective has various uses including expressive intensification, bandinage, calumny, insult, challenge, and provocation. For many of these uses, obscene words can advance the purposes of the speaker, but are inessential and self-defeating in many cases. The relation between some of the most common styles of invective and older forms of malediction, the uses of invective, the doctrine of fighting words and its difficulties, the role of obscenity in invective, and derivative uses of obscenity are discussed.Less
Invective has various uses including expressive intensification, bandinage, calumny, insult, challenge, and provocation. For many of these uses, obscene words can advance the purposes of the speaker, but are inessential and self-defeating in many cases. The relation between some of the most common styles of invective and older forms of malediction, the uses of invective, the doctrine of fighting words and its difficulties, the role of obscenity in invective, and derivative uses of obscenity are discussed.
Joel Feinberg
- Published in print:
- 1988
- Published Online:
- February 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780195052152
- eISBN:
- 9780199785872
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195052153.003.0009
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy
Obscenity is the language of impiety, irreverence, and disrespect. Some use it to convey a disrespectful attitude towards a person or platitude, while others use it to reject the prevailing norms of ...
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Obscenity is the language of impiety, irreverence, and disrespect. Some use it to convey a disrespectful attitude towards a person or platitude, while others use it to reject the prevailing norms of propriety. The meanings of the terms euphemism, cacophemism, prophemism, and disphemism are explained. The reaction to excessive euphemization, two strategies for ridding the language of obscene words, the phenomenon of dirty-mindedness, and the case for retaining the obscene vocabulary are discussed.Less
Obscenity is the language of impiety, irreverence, and disrespect. Some use it to convey a disrespectful attitude towards a person or platitude, while others use it to reject the prevailing norms of propriety. The meanings of the terms euphemism, cacophemism, prophemism, and disphemism are explained. The reaction to excessive euphemization, two strategies for ridding the language of obscene words, the phenomenon of dirty-mindedness, and the case for retaining the obscene vocabulary are discussed.
Edward Burns
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780853230380
- eISBN:
- 9781846317644
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/UPO9781846317644.001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
This introduction describes Rochester as the most irrepressibly destructive of all the English poets. The very idea of the anarchic libertine poet, as created in the gossip of his contemporaries and ...
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This introduction describes Rochester as the most irrepressibly destructive of all the English poets. The very idea of the anarchic libertine poet, as created in the gossip of his contemporaries and in the notoriety of unpublishably obscene texts, disrupts any attempt to account for his writings from within the institutions and procedures of the Academy. The essays that follow are introduced, but it concludes with Rochester perceived not as a challenging outsider, but as a figure central to his age, active in the articulation of a sceptical and committed language that offers us, as readers, a point of entry into late seventeenth-century culture as a whole.Less
This introduction describes Rochester as the most irrepressibly destructive of all the English poets. The very idea of the anarchic libertine poet, as created in the gossip of his contemporaries and in the notoriety of unpublishably obscene texts, disrupts any attempt to account for his writings from within the institutions and procedures of the Academy. The essays that follow are introduced, but it concludes with Rochester perceived not as a challenging outsider, but as a figure central to his age, active in the articulation of a sceptical and committed language that offers us, as readers, a point of entry into late seventeenth-century culture as a whole.
Julian Petley
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748625383
- eISBN:
- 9780748670871
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748625383.003.0003
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The most obvious reason why the Video Recordings Bill is undesirable is that the so-called ‘video nasties’ have already been deemed illegal under the Obscene Publications Act (OPA) and disappeared. ...
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The most obvious reason why the Video Recordings Bill is undesirable is that the so-called ‘video nasties’ have already been deemed illegal under the Obscene Publications Act (OPA) and disappeared. In its statutory role, the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC) will become a large quango accountable to no one but the Secretary of State. It is impossible not to see the Bill as part and parcel of a multi-fronted attack on civil liberties in Britain. Sir Bernard Braine has continuously tried to hijack the Bill on its passage through the Committee Stage. The chapter then deals with some of the wider knock-on effects of the Video Recordings Bill, such as its effects on film censorship and on television. It is mentioned that the Video Recordings Bill cannot be divorced from the wider ideological climate.Less
The most obvious reason why the Video Recordings Bill is undesirable is that the so-called ‘video nasties’ have already been deemed illegal under the Obscene Publications Act (OPA) and disappeared. In its statutory role, the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC) will become a large quango accountable to no one but the Secretary of State. It is impossible not to see the Bill as part and parcel of a multi-fronted attack on civil liberties in Britain. Sir Bernard Braine has continuously tried to hijack the Bill on its passage through the Committee Stage. The chapter then deals with some of the wider knock-on effects of the Video Recordings Bill, such as its effects on film censorship and on television. It is mentioned that the Video Recordings Bill cannot be divorced from the wider ideological climate.
Stacy Braukman
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780813039824
- eISBN:
- 9780813043166
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813039824.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This chapter covers 1961-62, when the FLIC found an ally in a newly elected segregationist governor and received his stamp of approval to sponsor a statewide educational campaign about the related ...
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This chapter covers 1961-62, when the FLIC found an ally in a newly elected segregationist governor and received his stamp of approval to sponsor a statewide educational campaign about the related dangers of homosexuality and obscene literature, and when the committee began hearing murmurs of discontent from conservative parents of University of South Florida (USF) students.Less
This chapter covers 1961-62, when the FLIC found an ally in a newly elected segregationist governor and received his stamp of approval to sponsor a statewide educational campaign about the related dangers of homosexuality and obscene literature, and when the committee began hearing murmurs of discontent from conservative parents of University of South Florida (USF) students.
P. C. Kemeny
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- December 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190844394
- eISBN:
- 9780190844424
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190844394.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society, History of Christianity
The New England Watch and Ward Society provides a new window into the history of the Protestant establishment’s prominent role in late nineteenth-century public life and its confrontation with ...
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The New England Watch and Ward Society provides a new window into the history of the Protestant establishment’s prominent role in late nineteenth-century public life and its confrontation with modernity, commercial culture, and cultural pluralism in early twentieth-century America. Elite liberal Protestants, typically considered progressive, urbane, and tolerant, established the Watch and Ward Society in 1878 to suppress obscene literature, including Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. These self-appointed custodians of Victorian culture enjoyed widespread support from many of New England’s most renowned ministers, distinguished college presidents, respected social reformers, and wealthy philanthropists. In the 1880s, the Watch and Ward Society expanded its efforts to regulate public morality by attacking gambling and prostitution. The society not only expressed late nineteenth-century Victorian American values about what constituted “good literature,” sexual morality, and public duty but also embodied Protestants’ efforts to promote these values in an increasing intellectually and culturally diverse society. By 1930, however, the Watch and Ward Society suffered a very public fall from grace. Following controversies over the suppression of H. L. Mencken’s American Mercury as well as popular novels, including Sinclair Lewis’s Elmer Gantry and D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, cultural modernists, civil libertarians, and publishers attacked the moral reform movement, ridiculing its leaders’ privileged backgrounds, social idealism, and religious commitments. Their critique reshaped the dynamics of Protestant moral reform activity as well as public discourse in subsequent decades. For more than a generation, however, the Watch and Ward Society expressed mainline Protestant attitudes toward literature, gambling, and sexuality.Less
The New England Watch and Ward Society provides a new window into the history of the Protestant establishment’s prominent role in late nineteenth-century public life and its confrontation with modernity, commercial culture, and cultural pluralism in early twentieth-century America. Elite liberal Protestants, typically considered progressive, urbane, and tolerant, established the Watch and Ward Society in 1878 to suppress obscene literature, including Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. These self-appointed custodians of Victorian culture enjoyed widespread support from many of New England’s most renowned ministers, distinguished college presidents, respected social reformers, and wealthy philanthropists. In the 1880s, the Watch and Ward Society expanded its efforts to regulate public morality by attacking gambling and prostitution. The society not only expressed late nineteenth-century Victorian American values about what constituted “good literature,” sexual morality, and public duty but also embodied Protestants’ efforts to promote these values in an increasing intellectually and culturally diverse society. By 1930, however, the Watch and Ward Society suffered a very public fall from grace. Following controversies over the suppression of H. L. Mencken’s American Mercury as well as popular novels, including Sinclair Lewis’s Elmer Gantry and D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, cultural modernists, civil libertarians, and publishers attacked the moral reform movement, ridiculing its leaders’ privileged backgrounds, social idealism, and religious commitments. Their critique reshaped the dynamics of Protestant moral reform activity as well as public discourse in subsequent decades. For more than a generation, however, the Watch and Ward Society expressed mainline Protestant attitudes toward literature, gambling, and sexuality.
Julian Petley
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748625383
- eISBN:
- 9780748670871
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748625383.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
How does film and video censorship operate in Britain? Why does it exist? And is it too strict? Starting in 1979, the birth of the domestic video industry — and the first year of the Thatcher ...
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How does film and video censorship operate in Britain? Why does it exist? And is it too strict? Starting in 1979, the birth of the domestic video industry — and the first year of the Thatcher government — this critical study explains how the censorship of films both in cinemas and on video and DVD has developed in Britain. As well as presenting a detailed analysis of the workings of the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), this book casts a gaze well beyond the BBFC to analyse the forces which the Board has to take into account when classifying and censoring. These range from laws such as the Video Recordings Act and Obscene Publications Act, and how these are enforced by the police and Crown Prosecution Service and interpreted by the courts, to government policy on matters such as pornography. In discussing a climate heavily coloured by 30 years of lurid ‘video nasty’ stories propagated by a press that is at once censorious and sensationalist and which has played a key role in bringing about and legitimating one of the strictest systems of film and video/DVD censorship in Europe, this book is notable for the breadth of its contextual analysis, its critical stance and its suggestions for reform of the present system.Less
How does film and video censorship operate in Britain? Why does it exist? And is it too strict? Starting in 1979, the birth of the domestic video industry — and the first year of the Thatcher government — this critical study explains how the censorship of films both in cinemas and on video and DVD has developed in Britain. As well as presenting a detailed analysis of the workings of the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), this book casts a gaze well beyond the BBFC to analyse the forces which the Board has to take into account when classifying and censoring. These range from laws such as the Video Recordings Act and Obscene Publications Act, and how these are enforced by the police and Crown Prosecution Service and interpreted by the courts, to government policy on matters such as pornography. In discussing a climate heavily coloured by 30 years of lurid ‘video nasty’ stories propagated by a press that is at once censorious and sensationalist and which has played a key role in bringing about and legitimating one of the strictest systems of film and video/DVD censorship in Europe, this book is notable for the breadth of its contextual analysis, its critical stance and its suggestions for reform of the present system.
RAYMOND J. HABERSKI
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780813124292
- eISBN:
- 9780813134918
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813124292.003.0009
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter discusses obscenity, which was a category that movies could not easily venture into. When they did, it was up to judges, not the old moral guardians and official censors, to impose ...
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This chapter discusses obscenity, which was a category that movies could not easily venture into. When they did, it was up to judges, not the old moral guardians and official censors, to impose standards of taste. Each case that tested the ambiguous boundary between offensive and obscene culture made it apparent that defending something controversial was often a less than honorable venture. The chapter further shows a movie culture that made it “chic” to take a stand in defense of dubious art.Less
This chapter discusses obscenity, which was a category that movies could not easily venture into. When they did, it was up to judges, not the old moral guardians and official censors, to impose standards of taste. Each case that tested the ambiguous boundary between offensive and obscene culture made it apparent that defending something controversial was often a less than honorable venture. The chapter further shows a movie culture that made it “chic” to take a stand in defense of dubious art.
Katherine Mullin
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199697564
- eISBN:
- 9780191764745
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199697564.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
The chapter analyses the creation and definition of obscenity in the Obscene Publications Act of 1857 and the ‘Hicklin Ruling’ of 1868. It considers the parliamentary debates which led up to the 1857 ...
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The chapter analyses the creation and definition of obscenity in the Obscene Publications Act of 1857 and the ‘Hicklin Ruling’ of 1868. It considers the parliamentary debates which led up to the 1857 Act, and the polarized views of MPs on the subject. It also analyses the disagreements and anxieties surrounding the Hicklin Ruling, revealing the conflicts among nineteenth-century legislators, commentators, publishers, and writers on the question of literary censorship.Less
The chapter analyses the creation and definition of obscenity in the Obscene Publications Act of 1857 and the ‘Hicklin Ruling’ of 1868. It considers the parliamentary debates which led up to the 1857 Act, and the polarized views of MPs on the subject. It also analyses the disagreements and anxieties surrounding the Hicklin Ruling, revealing the conflicts among nineteenth-century legislators, commentators, publishers, and writers on the question of literary censorship.
David Bradshaw
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199697564
- eISBN:
- 9780191764745
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199697564.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This chapter focuses on the period leading up to the passage of the Obscene Publications Act of 1959. It considers fears of the Americanization of British culture culminating in the purge of 1954, ...
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This chapter focuses on the period leading up to the passage of the Obscene Publications Act of 1959. It considers fears of the Americanization of British culture culminating in the purge of 1954, when the scale and intensity of anti-obscenity proceedings reached a peak for the period covered by this book. It also describes key moments of dispute around the publication of Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead and Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita.Less
This chapter focuses on the period leading up to the passage of the Obscene Publications Act of 1959. It considers fears of the Americanization of British culture culminating in the purge of 1954, when the scale and intensity of anti-obscenity proceedings reached a peak for the period covered by this book. It also describes key moments of dispute around the publication of Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead and Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita.
Julian Petley
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748625383
- eISBN:
- 9780748670871
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748625383.003.0012
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter illustrates the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) trying repeatedly to liberalise its guidelines relating to ‘R18’ videos, and being prevented from doing so by the then Home ...
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This chapter illustrates the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) trying repeatedly to liberalise its guidelines relating to ‘R18’ videos, and being prevented from doing so by the then Home Secretary Jack Straw. The story of the ‘R18’ began in 1982. The differences between Section 2 and Section 3 proceedings under the Obscene Publications Act (OPA) are explained. Bernard Williams' unwillingness to recommend that sex shops should be licensed had by 1987 been amply justified. The combined efforts of Customs and the Home Secretary brought to an end the trial liberalisation period. The Makin' Whoopee! was passed by the Video Appeals Committee (VAC). It ‘may offend or disgust but it is unlikely to deprave or corrupt that proportion of the public who are likely to view it’. Straw ultimately failed to bend the BBFC to his will makes the existence of those powers no less disturbing.Less
This chapter illustrates the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) trying repeatedly to liberalise its guidelines relating to ‘R18’ videos, and being prevented from doing so by the then Home Secretary Jack Straw. The story of the ‘R18’ began in 1982. The differences between Section 2 and Section 3 proceedings under the Obscene Publications Act (OPA) are explained. Bernard Williams' unwillingness to recommend that sex shops should be licensed had by 1987 been amply justified. The combined efforts of Customs and the Home Secretary brought to an end the trial liberalisation period. The Makin' Whoopee! was passed by the Video Appeals Committee (VAC). It ‘may offend or disgust but it is unlikely to deprave or corrupt that proportion of the public who are likely to view it’. Straw ultimately failed to bend the BBFC to his will makes the existence of those powers no less disturbing.
