Publish and Perish: The Practice of Censorship in the British Isles in the Early Modern Period

Publish and Perish: The Practice of Censorship in the British Isles in the Early Modern Period PDF Author: Isabelle Fernandes
Publisher: Vernon Press
ISBN: 1622739647
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
The development of printing practices during Tudor rule led both to the dissemination of religious and secular knowledge, and the development of a legal arsenal to control it. While the vast majority of studies on censorship regard it as being at the origin of the notion of authorship, critics tend to disagree on its actual influence on early modern writings. Who, among the Church and the secular state, were its main supporters? Did it aim at destroying or removing, punishing or protecting, hampering or regulating? Did it propagate a culture of secrecy or, on the contrary, did it help to circulate new ideas and knowledge by controlling them and making them more acceptable to the masses? If the answers to these questions are bound to differ according to the aesthetic and religious biases of both censors and censored, they all lead to one major point of debate: did censorship really work to stop some marginal threat or did it simply improve the lot of early modern writers who turned its limited negative effects into a comforting shield of self-publicity? By suggesting it suppressed neither artistic creativity nor subversive practices, this volume analyses censorship in Britain and Ireland during the Tudor and Stuart periods as an instrument of regulation, rather than a repressive tool. Ideal for both graduate students and general readers interested in Early Modern History, the work sheds new light on a topic as fascinating as it is often misunderstood.

Publish and Perish: The Practice of Censorship in the British Isles in the Early Modern Period

Publish and Perish: The Practice of Censorship in the British Isles in the Early Modern Period PDF Author: Isabelle Fernandes
Publisher: Vernon Press
ISBN: 1622739647
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 202

Get Book Here

Book Description
The development of printing practices during Tudor rule led both to the dissemination of religious and secular knowledge, and the development of a legal arsenal to control it. While the vast majority of studies on censorship regard it as being at the origin of the notion of authorship, critics tend to disagree on its actual influence on early modern writings. Who, among the Church and the secular state, were its main supporters? Did it aim at destroying or removing, punishing or protecting, hampering or regulating? Did it propagate a culture of secrecy or, on the contrary, did it help to circulate new ideas and knowledge by controlling them and making them more acceptable to the masses? If the answers to these questions are bound to differ according to the aesthetic and religious biases of both censors and censored, they all lead to one major point of debate: did censorship really work to stop some marginal threat or did it simply improve the lot of early modern writers who turned its limited negative effects into a comforting shield of self-publicity? By suggesting it suppressed neither artistic creativity nor subversive practices, this volume analyses censorship in Britain and Ireland during the Tudor and Stuart periods as an instrument of regulation, rather than a repressive tool. Ideal for both graduate students and general readers interested in Early Modern History, the work sheds new light on a topic as fascinating as it is often misunderstood.

Publish and Perish

Publish and Perish PDF Author: Isabelle Fernandes
Publisher: Vernon Press
ISBN: 9781622734054
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
The development of printing practices during Tudor rule led both to the dissemination of religious and secular knowledge, and the development of a legal arsenal to control it. While the vast majority of studies on censorship regard it as being at the origin of the notion of authorship, critics tend to disagree on its actual influence on early modern writings. Who, among the Church and the secular state, were its main supporters? Did it aim at destroying or removing, punishing or protecting, hampering or regulating? Did it propagate a culture of secrecy or, on the contrary, did it help to circulate new ideas and knowledge by controlling them and making them more acceptable to the masses? If the answers to these questions are bound to differ according to the aesthetic and religious biases of both censors and censored, they all lead to one major point of debate: did censorship really work to stop some marginal threat or did it simply improve the lot of early modern writers who turned its limited negative effects into a comforting shield of self-publicity? By suggesting it suppressed neither artistic creativity nor subversive practices, this volume analyses censorship in Britain and Ireland during the Tudor and Stuart periods as an instrument of regulation, rather than a repressive tool. Ideal for both graduate students and general readers interested in Early Modern History, the work sheds new light on a topic as fascinating as it is often misunderstood.

Licensing, Censorship and Authorship in Early Modern England

Licensing, Censorship and Authorship in Early Modern England PDF Author: R. Dutton
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230598714
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
Licensing, Censorship and Authorship in Early Modern England examines in detail both how the practice of censorship shaped writing in the Shakespearean period, and how our sense of that censorship continues to shape modern understandings of what was written. Separate chapters trace the development of licensing in the theatre, and the response of the actors and dramatists to it. There are detailed examinations of how censorship affects our reading of four major playwrights: Marlowe, Shakespeare, Jonson and Middleton, and of how the control of printed books compared with that of the stage.

The Invention of Free Press

The Invention of Free Press PDF Author: Edoardo Tortarolo
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9401773467
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
Tracking the relationship between the theory of press control and the realities of practicing daily press censorship prior to publication, this volume on the suppression of dissent in early modern Europe tackles a topic with many elusive and under-researched characteristics. Pre-publication censorship was common in absolutist regimes in Catholic and Protestant countries alike, but how effective it was in practice remains open to debate. The Netherlands and England, where critical content segued into outright lampoonery, were unusual for hard-wired press freedoms that arose, respectively, from a highly competitive publishing industry and highly decentralized political institutions. These nations remained extraordinary exceptions to a rule that, for example in France, did not end until the revolution of 1789. Here, the author’s European perspective provides a survey of the varying censorship regulations in European nations, as well as the shifting meanings of ‘freedom of the press’. The analysis opens up fascinating insights, afforded by careful reading of primary archival sources, into the reactions of censors confronted with manuscripts by authors seeking permission to publish. Tortarolo sets the opinions on censorship of well-known writers, including Voltaire and Montesquieu, alongside the commentary of anonymous censors, allowing us to revisit some common views of eighteenth-century history. How far did these writers, their reasoning stiffened by Enlightenment values, promote dissident views of absolutist monarchies in Europe, and what insights did governments gain from censors’ reports into the social tensions brewing under their rule? These questions will excite dedicated researchers, graduate students, and discerning lay readers alike.

Freedom and Censorship in Early Modern English Literature

Freedom and Censorship in Early Modern English Literature PDF Author: Sophie Chiari
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429684207
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 381

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Book Description
Broadening the notion of censorship, this volume explores the transformative role played by early modern censors in the fashioning of a distinct English literature in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In early modern England, the Privy Council, the Bishop of London and the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Stationers’ Company, and the Master of the Revels each dealt with their own prerogatives and implemented different forms of censorship, with the result that authors penning both plays and satires had to juggle with various authorities and unequal degrees of freedom from one sector to the other. Text and press control thus did not give way to systematic intervention but to particular responses adapted to specific texts in a specific time. If the restrictions imposed by regulation practices are duly acknowledged in this edited collection, the different contributors are also keen to enhance the positive impact of censorship on early modern literature. The most difficult task consists in finding the exact moment when the balance tips in favour of creativity, and the zone where, in matters of artistic freedom, the disadvantages outweigh the benefits. This is what the twelve chapters of the volume proceed to do. Thanks to a wide variety of examples, they show that, in the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, regulations seldom prevented writers to make themselves heard, albeit through indirect channels. By contrast, in the 1630s, the increased supremacy of the Church seemed to tip the balance the other way.

Licensing, Censorship and Authorship in Early Modern England

Licensing, Censorship and Authorship in Early Modern England PDF Author: R. Dutton
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9780312236243
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
Licensing, Censorship and Authorship in Early Modern England examines in detail both how the practice of censorship shaped writing in the Shakespearean period, and how our sense of that censorship continues to shape modern understandings of what was written. Separate chapters trace the development of licensing in the theatre, and the response of the actors and dramatists to it. There are detailed examinations of how censorship affects our reading of four major playwrights: Marlowe, Shakespeare, Jonson and Middleton, and of how the control of printed books compared with that of the stage.

Censorship and Conflict in Seventeenth-Century England

Censorship and Conflict in Seventeenth-Century England PDF Author: Randy Robertson
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271075287
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
Censorship profoundly affected early modern writing. Censorship and Conflict in Seventeenth-Century England offers a detailed picture of early modern censorship and investigates the pressures that censorship exerted on seventeenth-century authors, printers, and publishers. In the 1600s, Britain witnessed a civil war, the judicial execution of a king, the restoration of his son, and an unremitting struggle among crown, parliament, and people for sovereignty and the right to define “liberty and property.” This battle, sometimes subtle, sometimes bloody, entailed a struggle for the control of language and representation. Robertson offers a richly detailed study of this “censorship contest” and of the craft that writers employed to outflank the licensers. He argues that for most parties, victory, not diplomacy or consensus, was the ultimate goal. This book differs from most recent works in analyzing both the mechanics of early modern censorship and the poetics that the licensing system produced—the forms and pressures of self-censorship. Among the issues that Robertson addresses in this book are the workings of the licensing machinery, the designs of art and obliquity under a regime of censorship, and the involutions of authorship attendant on anonymity.

Censorship and Interpretation

Censorship and Interpretation PDF Author: Annabel M. Patterson
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 9780299099541
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
Annabel Patterson explores the effects of censorship on both writing and reading in early modern England, drawing analogies and connections with France during the same period.

Royalism, Print and Censorship in Revolutionary England

Royalism, Print and Censorship in Revolutionary England PDF Author: Jason McElligott
Publisher: Boydell Press
ISBN: 9781843833239
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
A study of the content and methods of royalist propaganda via newsbooks in the crucial period following the end of the first civil war. This is a study of a remarkable set of royalist newsbooks produced in conditions of strict secrecy in London during the late 1640s. It uses these flimsy, ephemeral sheets of paper to rethink the nature of both royalism and Civil War allegiance. Royalism, Print and Censorship in Revolutionary England moves beyond the simple and simplistic dichotomies of 'absolutism' versus 'constitutionalism'. In doing so, it offers a nuanced, innovative and exciting visionof a strangely neglected aspect of the Civil Wars. Print has always been seen as a radical, destabilizing force: an agent of social change and revolution. Royalism, Print and Censorship in Revolutionary England demonstrates, bycontrast, how lively, vibrant and exciting the use of print as an agent of conservatism could be. It seeks to rescue the history of polemic in 1640s and 1650s England from an undue preoccupation with the factional squabbles of leading politicians. In doing so, it offers a fundamental reappraisal of the theory and practice of censorship in early-modern England, and of the way in which we should approach the history of books and print-culture. JASON McELLIGOTT is the J.P.R. Lyell Research Fellow in the History of the Early Modern Printed Book at Merton College, Oxford.

A Matter of Obscenity

A Matter of Obscenity PDF Author: Christopher Hilliard
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691197989
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
"A popular story about the 1960s and 1970s holds that this was when Britain shook off the vestiges of an oppressive Victorian moralism. Many of those campaigning against censorship saw it this way. But this was also a struggle that pitted Victorian liberalism against supposedly Victorian morals. John Stuart Mill's ideas provided a way of thinking about freedom, personal autonomy, and the social contract for people who otherwise had little in common with Victorian liberals. This book by Chris Hilliard of the University of Syndey will show how readers and editors, lawyers and law enforcement, politicians and philosophers grappled with questions of freedom, authority and order as a famously deferential society became increasingly pluralist. It was in the aftermath of the publication of affordable English language editions of the works of Emile Zola, in the late 19th century, that this essentially Victorian conflict first materialised in recognisable form. It was in 1960, when Penguin were tried for obscenity after the publication, in English, of the first unedited edtion, that this conflict reached both a crescendo and then a settlement. The book is divided into four parts, each tracing the story of a different phase in the history of obscenity law in Britain. There are also three "interludes" examining areas of law that came into tension with the social changes of the modern period-libel, sedition, and blasphemy. The interludes place struggles over obscenity in a larger cultural context and deepen the legal analysis by exploring the conceptual and policy challenges thrown up by other common-law misdemeanors and tort law"--