The theatre and drama of the late Georgian period have been the focus of a number of recent studies, but such work has tended to ignore its social and political contexts. Theatric Revolution redresses the balance by considering the role of stage censorship during the Romantic period, an era otherwise associated with the freedom of expression. Looking beyond the Royal theatres at Covent Garden and Drury Lane which have dominated most recent accounts of the period, this book examines the day-to-day workings of the Lord Chamberlain's Examiner of Plays and shows that radicalized groups of individuals continuously sought ways to evade the suppression of both playhouses and dramatic texts.
Incorporating a wealth of new research, David Worrall reveals the centrality of theatre within busy networks of print culture, politics of all casts, elite and popular cultures, and metropolitan and provincial audiences. Ranging from the drawing room of Queen Caroline's private theatrical to the song-and-supper dens of Soho and radical free and easies, Theatric Revolution deals with the complex vitality of Romantic theatrical culture, and its intense politicization at all levels. This fascinating new study will be of great value to cultural historians, as well as to literary and theatre scholars.

Miracles and Sacrilege is the story of the epochal conflict between censorship and freedom in film, recounted through an in-depth analysis of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision striking down a government ban on Roberto Rossellini's film The Miracle (1950). In this extraordinary case, the Court ultimately chose to abandon its own longstanding determination that film comprised a mere 'business' unworthy of free-speech rights, declaring for the first time that the First Amendment barred government from banning any film as 'sacreligious.' Using legal briefs, affidavits, and other court records, as well as letters, memoranda, and other archival materials to elucidate what was at issue in the case, William Bruce Johnson also analyzes the social, cultural, and religious elements that form the background of this complex and hard-fought controversy, focusing particularly on the fundamental role played by the Catholic Church in the history of film censorship. Tracing the development of the Church in the United States, Johnson discusses the reasons it found The Miracle sacrilegious and how it attained the power to persuade civil authorities to ban it. The Court's decision was not only a milestone in the law of church-state relations, but it paved the way for a succession of later decisions which gradually established a firm legal basis for freedom of expression in the arts.

Using previously unpublished material from the National Archives, David Thomas, David Carlton, and Anne Etienne provide a new perspective on British cultural history. Statutory censorship was first introduced in Britain by Sir Robert Walpole with his Licensing Act of 1737. Previously theatre censorship was exercised under the Royal Prerogative. By giving the Lord Chamberlain statutory powers of theatre censorship, Walpole ensured that confusion over the relationship between the Royal Prerogative and statute law would prevent any serious challenge to theatre censorship in Parliament until the twentieth century.
The authors place theatre censorship legislation and its attempted reform in their wider political context. Sections outlining the political history of key periods explain why theatre censorship legislation was introduced in 1737, why attempts to reform the legislation failed in 1832, 1909, and 1949, and finally succeeded in 1968. Opposition from Edward VII helped to prevent the abolition of theatre censorship in 1909. In 1968, theatre censorship was abolished despite opposition from Elizabeth II, Lord Cobbold (her Lord Chamberlain) and Harold Wilson (her Prime Minister). There was strong support for theatre censorship on the part of commercial theatre managers who saw censorship as offering protection from vexatious prosecution. A policy of inertia and deliberate obfuscation on the part of Home Office officials helped to prevent the abolition of theatre censorship legislation until 1968. It was only when playwrights, directors, critics, audiences, and politicians (notably Roy Jenkins) applied combined pressure that theatre censorship was finally abolished.
The volumeconcludes by exploring whether new forms of covert censorship have replaced the statutory theatre censorship abolished with the 1968 Theatres Act.

In Dirt for Art's Sake, Elisabeth Ladenson recounts the most visible of modern obscenity trials involving scandalous books and their authors. What, she asks, do these often-colorful legal histories have to tell us about the works themselves and about a changing cultural climate that first treated them as filth and later celebrated them as masterpieces?

Ladenson's narrative starts with Madame Bovary (Flaubert was tried in France in 1857) and finishes with Fanny Hill (written in the eighteenth century, put on trial in the United States in 1966); she considers, along the way, Les Fleurs du Mal, Ulysses, The Well of Loneliness, Lady Chatterley's Lover, Tropic of Cancer, Lolita, and the works of the Marquis de Sade. Over the course of roughly a century, Ladenson finds, two ideas that had been circulating in the form of avant-garde heresy gradually became accepted as truisms, and eventually as grounds for legal defense. The first is captured in the formula "art for art's sake" the notion that a work of art exists in a realm independent of conventional morality. The second is realism, vilified by its critics as "dirt for dirt's sake." In Ladenson's view, the truth of the matter is closer to dirt for art's sake "the idea that the work of art may legitimately include the representation of all aspects of life, including the unpleasant and the sordid.

Ladenson also considers cinematic adaptations of these novels, among them Vincente Minnelli's Madame Bovary, Stanley Kubrick's Lolita and the 1997 remake directed by Adrian Lyne, and various attempts to translate de Sade's works and life into film, which faced similar censorship travails. Written with a keen awareness of ongoing debates about free speech, Dirt for Art's Sake traces the legal and social acceptance of controversial works with critical acumen and delightful wit."

In this gracefully written, accessible and entertaining volume, John Semonche surveys censorship for reasons of sex from the nineteenth century up to the present. He covers the various forms of American media-books and periodicals, pictorial art, motion pictures, music and dance, and radio, television, and the Internet. The tale is varied and interesting, replete with a stock of colorful characters such as Anthony Comstock, Mae West, Theodore Dreiser, Marcel Duchamp, Opie and Anthony, Judy Blume, Jerry Falwell, Alfred Kinsey, Hugh Hefner, and the Guerilla Girls. Covering the history of censorship of sexual ideas and images is one way of telling the story of modern America, and Semonche tells that tale with insight and flair. Despite the varieties of censorship, running from self-censorship to government bans, a common story is told. Censorship, whether undertaken to ward off government regulation, to help preserve the social order, or to protect the weak and vulnerable, proceeds on the assumption that the censor knows best and that limiting the choices of media consumers is justified. At various times all of the following groups were perceived as needing protection from sexually explicit materials: children, women, the lower classes, and foreigners. As social and political conditions changed, however, the simple fact that someone was a woman or a day laborer did not support stereotyping that person as weak or impressionable. What would remain as the only acceptable rationale for censorship of sexual materials was the protection of children and unconsenting adults. For each mode of media, Semonche explains via abundant examples how and why censorship took place in America. Censoring Sex also traces the story of how the cultural territory contested by those advocating and opposing censorship has diminished over the course of the last two centuries. Yet, Semonche argues, the censorship of sexual materials that continues in the United States poses a challenge to the free speech that is part of the f

This 2001 book examines the ways in which books were produced, read and received during the reign of King James I. It challenges prevailing attitudes that press censorship in Jacobean England differed little from either the 'whole machinery of control' enacted by the Court of Star Chamber under Elizabeth or the draconian campaign implemented by Archbishop Laud, during the reign of Charles I. Cyndia Clegg, building on her earlier study Press Censorship in Elizabethan England, contends that although the principal mechanisms for controlling the press altered little between 1558 and 1603, the actual practice of censorship under King James I varied significantly from Elizabethan practice. The book combines historical analysis of documents with literary reading of censored texts and exposes the kinds of tensions that really mattered in Jacobean culture. It will be an invaluable resource for literary scholars and historians alike.

The theatre and drama of the late Georgian period have been the focus of a number of recent studies, but such work has tended to ignore its social and political contexts. Theatric Revolution redresses the balance by considering the role of stage censorship during the Romantic period, an era otherwise associated with the freedom of expression. Looking beyond the Royal theatres at Covent Garden and Drury Lane which have dominated most recent accounts of the period, this book examines the day-to-day workings of the Lord Chamberlain's Examiner of Plays and shows that radicalized groups of individuals continuously sought ways to evade the suppression of both playhouses and dramatic texts.
Incorporating a wealth of new research, David Worrall reveals the centrality of theatre within busy networks of print culture, politics of all casts, elite and popular cultures, and metropolitan and provincial audiences. Ranging from the drawing room of Queen Caroline's private theatrical to the song-and-supper dens of Soho and radical free and easies, Theatric Revolution deals with the complex vitality of Romantic theatrical culture, and its intense politicization at all levels. This fascinating new study will be of great value to cultural historians, as well as to literary and theatre scholars.

Censorship and Cultural Sensibility The Regulation of Language in Tudor-Stuart England Debora Shuger "May be the year's most erudite book. . . . A major scholarly achievement, since it bears on the work so many now do."--"Studies in English Literature" "Scrupulously researched, carefully written, argued, and developed, this is one of those books for which it is hard to imagine a mortal author."--Patrick Cheney, "Studies in English Literature" "This is a major work. Shuger deals with the rules of appropriate language use in early modern Europe, making an argument about censorship in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England that is original, surprising, and, in her thorough presentation, entirely plausible."--Katharine Eisaman Maus, University of Virginia "This magisterial work should be considered a basic text of analysts for Tudor-Stuart linguists, historians, and legal scholars."--"History: Review of New Books" "An extremely impressive book, brimming with ideas and erudition, and putting forward an innovative and challenging interpretation which should be of great interest to lawyers as well as literary and social historians."--"Journal of Law and Society" In this study of the reciprocities binding religion, politics, law, and literature, Debora Shuger offers a profoundly new history of early modern English censorship, one that bears centrally on issues still current: the rhetoric of ideological extremism, the use of defamation to ruin political opponents, the grounding of law in theological ethics, and the terrible fragility of public spheres. Starting from the question of why no one prior to the mid-1640s argued for free speech or a free press per se, "Censorship and Cultural Sensibility" surveys the texts against which Tudor-Stuart censorship aimed its biggest guns, which turned out not to be principled dissent but libels, conspiracy fantasies, and hate speech. The book explores the laws that attempted to suppress such material, the cultural values that underwrote this regulation, and, finally, the very different framework of assumptions whose gradual adoption rendered censorship illegitimate. Virtually all substantive law on language concerned defamation, regulating what one could say about other people. Hence Tudor-Stuart laws extended protection only to the person hurt by another's words, never to their speaker. In treating transgressive language as akin to battery, English law differed fundamentally from papal censorship, which construed its target as heresy. There were thus two models of censorship operative in the early modern period, both premised on religious norms, but one concerned primarily with false accusation and libel, the other with false belief and immorality. Shuger investigates the first of these models--the dominant English one--tracing its complex origins in the Roman law of "iniuria" through medieval theological ethics and Continental jurisprudence to its continuities and discontinuities with current U.S. law. In so doing, she enables her reader to grasp how in certain contexts censorship could be understood as safeguarding both charitable community and personal dignitary rights. Debora Shuger is Professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the author of "Political Theologies in Shakespeare's England" and other books. 2006 360 pages 6 x 9 ISBN 978-0-8122-3917-1 Cloth $59.95s 39.00 ISBN 978-0-8122-0334-9 Ebook $59.95s 39.00 World Rights History Short copy: "This is a major work. Shuger deals with the rules of appropriate language use in early modern Europe, making an argument about censorship in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England that is original, surprising, and, in her thorough presentation, entirely plausible."--Katharine Eisaman Maus, University of Virginia

This incisive guide provides a much needed summary of the complex issues surrounding film censorship and controversy. It offers practical suggestions for teaching the determining factors in, and ideological importance of, censorship and classification. Also included are proposed strategies for discussing "problem films," analyzing texts, and debating the nature of effects. Contents include:
* The historical context for censorship and classification
* The discourses and ideologies that inform and produce controversy
* The arguments for and against censorship
* Concepts of audiences and effects
* Textual meanings
* Audience research and analysis of data
* Contemporary academic and official perspectives on censorship and classification

The first comparative study of censorship in theatre and cinema during the last century, this book examines notable twentieth-century cases involving the Lord Chamberlain's theatre censorship and the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC). Anthony Aldgate and James C. Robertson have written extensively on the subject of stage and screen censorship, and here they utilise previously unpublished Lord Chamberlain's censorship sources as well as hitherto unexplored BBFC files. They show how the two censorship agencies operated, with some interaction between them, over such controversial matters as sex, foreign affairs, juvenile crime, single-sex relationships, the 'swinging' 1960s, horror, religion and other contentious material. This wide-ranging study concludes by explaining why theatre censorship was abolished in 1968 whereas the BBFC has survived until the present day. Censorship in Theatre and Cinema is a valuable contribution to media history with implications for the practice of censorship in Britain today. Features * The first comparative study of censorship in both theatre and cinema * Accessible to both specialist and general readers alike * Covers both American and British stage and screen properties * Includes detailed analysis of various case studies to illustrate censorship procedures in action.

Although censorship may seem like a thing of the past, current controversies over books, movies, and websites prove it to be a very timely and critical issue. Fully updated and Revised with more than 50 percent new material, Encyclopedia of Censorship, New Edition presents a full range of information about the history and evolution of censorship and its role in society today. Covering all forms of expression from the past to the present, from the office of the censor in ancient Rome to the Internet in the computer age, this completely current reference examines every facet of this complex subject. With an easy-to-use A-to-Z format perfect for high school and college students as well as anyone with an interest in censorship and its politics, Encyclopedia of Censorship, New Edition brings this important topic up to date through the new millennium.

This is a revisionist history of press censorship in the rapidly expanding print culture of the sixteenth century. Professor Clegg establishes the nature and source of the controls, and evaluates their means and effectiveness. The state wanted to control the burgeoning press, but there were difficulties in practice because of the competing and often contradictory interests of the Crown, the Church, and the printing trade. By considering the literary and bibliographical evidence of books actually censored and by placing them in the literary, religious, economic and political culture of the time, Clegg concludes that press control was not a routine nor a consistent mechanism but an individual response to particular texts that the state perceived as dangerous. This will be the standard reference work on Elizabethan press censorship, and is also a history of the Elizabethan state's principal crises.

"Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings," declared German poet Heinrich Heine. This book identifies the regime-sponsored, ideologically driven, and systemic destruction of books and libraries in the 20th century that often served as a prelude or accompaniment to the massive human tragedies that have characterized a most violent century. Using case studies of libricide committed by Nazis, Serbs in Bosnia, Iraqis in Kuwait, Maoists during the Cultural Revolution in China, and Chinese Communists in Tibet, Knuth argues that the destruction of books and libraries by authoritarian regimes was sparked by the same impulses toward negation that provoked acts of genocide or ethnocide. Readers will learn why some people--even those not subject to authoritarian regimes--consider the destruction of books a positive process. Knuth promotes understanding of the reasons behind extremism and patterns of cultural terrorism, and concludes that what is at stake with libricide is nothing less than the preservation and continuation of the common cultural heritage of the world. Anyone committed to freedom of expression and humanistic values will embrace this passionate and valuable book.

A thorough exploration of an individual's right to bodily autonomy versus the state's power to regulate and control the bodies of its citizens. The Human Body on Trial asks the basic question: Who's in charge of your body-you or the authorities? Four narrative chapters examine key constitutional questions addressed by the U.S. Supreme Court over the past century concerning the power of the state to regulate the human body, placing the issues in historical context and examining the contemporary legal and medical knowledge that informed each decision. The book focuses on individual cases, such as Jacobson v. Massachusetts (compulsory vaccination), Buck v. Bell (forced sterilization), and Roe v. Wade (abortion), and discusses such controversial issues as AIDS testing and physician-assisted suicide. A special reference section includes court decisions and other primary documents. Timeline of major events in the evolution of the legal right of individual autonomy from the ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868 to the 2002 ruling in State of Oregon and Peter Rasmussen, et al. v. John Ashcroft regarding implementing Oregon's Death with Dignity Act Excerpts from key legal documents from the Roe v. Wade (1973) decision to the lesser known Skinner v. Oklahoma (1942) ruling by the Supreme Court overturning the mandated sterilization for three-time offenders convicted of certain felonies

Here is a whole new set of rationales to be used in defending challenged books. Beautifully reasoned arguments support the teaching of books that are frequently challenged by would-be censors. Karolides has chosen a wide range of literature, from Faulkner's As I Lay Dying to the contemporary bestselling Harry Potter books. Some books are challenged in the name of political correctness; others because of concern over violent or sexual content. The rationale, some written by the authors themselves, examine the value of each work as literature, its content relative to societal values, and the always thorny issue of what material actually constitutes "suitable" reading for young people. For librarians, teachers, and parents and anyone concerned with intellectual freedom.

What rallies or inspires people to champion the different causes surrounding filtering or free expression? How do people vary in their views on what the First Amendment guarantees? This book encourages students to think critically about the pros and cons of censorship. The profiles of individuals who are active in free speech debates show that while there aren't always black and white answers, there are numerous ways to take a firm stand on the issues.

Readers will be introduced to a wide variety of people, from feminists arguing both sides of the debate over pornography, to those who believe no one can clearly define what is harmful and what is not. The book also presents people motivated by religious convictions to censor material they consider negative or detrimental. Fifty individual stories about activists on frontlines, fighting for what they believe, bring the controversies surrounding filtering and freedom of expression into sharp focus, offering a rich platform for consideration and debate.

" The new edition of this seminal work takes the story of the Production Code and motion picture censorship into the present, including the creation of the PG-13 and NC-17 ratings in the 1990s.

This book examines the ways in which books were produced, read, and received during the reign of King James I. Cyndia Clegg contends that although the principal mechanisms for controlling the press altered little between 1558 and 1603, the actual practice of censorship under James I varied significantly from Elizabethan practice. The book combines historical analysis of documents with the reading of censored texts and will be an invaluable resource for scholars as well as historians.

The Tudor and Stuart eras have been described as England's golden age, in large part because of the flowering of its literary and dramatic culture. Ironically, repressive government controls over freedom of expression existed side-by-side with some of the greatest literary accomplishments of the age, and many of the same issues we wrestle with today were being hotly debated in Renaissance England. This reference book provides a means for students and scholars to combine the highly popular topics of censorship and Renaissance studies. The 92 entries in this book highlight the major issues which could provoke the wrath of the censor, the ways in which works were modified in response to censorship, and the fate of the authors who roused the censor's ire. Entries are arranged alphabetically by title of the censored work. Each provides basic factual information, including the name of the author, the publication date, the date of censorship, the type of work, and the offending issue; a discussion of the work's historical context; a synopsis of the contents; an examination of how the work was censored; and a brief bibliography. Although there is a wealth of information on censorship in the twentieth century, this is one of the few reference books to address censorship during the Renaissance.

An examination of censorship and suppression of Indonesian writers. Works include fiction, poetry, journalism, interviews and courtroom testimony. An overview essay discusses the state of censorship in Indonesia and the role of censorship in a democratic society.

From 1815 to 1914, European governments and their political oppositions were engaged in a constant "war" for the minds of the general population, especially the working classes. The German socialist newspaper, Hamburger Echo, declared on September 27, 1910, "In waging our war, we do not throw bombs. Instead we throw our newspapers amongst the masses of the working people. Printing ink is our explosive." The most comprehensive study ever published about European censorship practices during the 1815-1914 period, this book discusses the censorship of books, newspapers, caricatures, theater, and film through an analytical introductory survey and six chapters by leading specialists who summarize 19th-century censorship practices in the six major countries of continental Europe: Germany, Italy, France, Austria, Russia, and Spain. As a result of the massive transformation of European life in the post-Napoleonic period and the simultaneously rapid growth in industrialization, urbanization, literacy, transportation, and communication, the average European emerged quite suddenly as a potential player who could no longer be ignored by the ruling elite.

Privacy is perhaps the most hallowed of American rights--and most people are concerned that new technologies available to governments and corporations threaten to erode this most privileged of rights. But in The Limits of Privacy, Amitai Etzioni offers a decidedly different point of view, in which the right to privacy is balanced against concern for public safety and health. Etzioni looks at five flashpoint issues: Megan's Laws, HIV testing of infants, deciphering of encrypted messages, national identification cards, and medical records, and concludes that there are times when Amricans' insistence on privacy is not in the best interests of society at large. He offers four clear and concise criteria which, when applied jointly, help us to determine when the right to privacy should be overridden for the greater public good.Almost every week headlines warn us that our cell phones are being monitored, our e-mails read, and our medical records traded on the open market. Public opinion polls show that Americans are dismayed about incursions against personal privacy. Congress and state legislatures are considering laws designed to address their concerns.Focusing on five flashpoint issues--Megan's Law, mandatory HIV testing of infants, encryption of electronic documents, national identification cards and biometric identifiers, and medical records--The Limits of Privacy argues counterintuitively that sometimes major public health and safety concerns should outweigh the individual's right to privacy. Presenting four concise criteria to determine when the right to privacy should be preserved and when it should be overridden in the interests of the wider community, Etzioni argues that, in somecases, we would do well to sacrifice the privacy of the individual in the name of the common good.

"Defacement" asks what happens when something precious is despoiled. It begins with the notion that such activity is attractive in its very repulsion, and that it creates something sacred even in the most secular of societies and circumstances. In specifying the human face as the ideal type for thinking through such violation, this book raises the issue of secrecy as the depth that seems to surface with the tearing of surface. This surfacing is made all the more subtle and ingenious, not to mention everyday, by the deliberately partial exposures involved in "the public secret"--defined as what is generally known but, for one reason or another, cannot easily be articulated.
Arguing that this sort of knowledge ("knowing what not to know") is the most powerful form of social knowledge, Taussig works with ideas and motifs from Nietzsche, William Burroughs, Elias Canetti, Georges Bataille, and the ethnography of unmasking in so-called primitive societies in order to extend his earlier work on mimesis and transgression. Underlying his concern with defacement and the public secret is the search for a mode of truth telling that unmasks, but only to reenchant, thereby underlining Walter Benjamin's notion that "truth is not a matter of exposure of the secret, but a revelation that does justice to it."

Many parents, politicians, and activists agree that there's too much violence and not enough education on children's television. Current solutions range from the legislative (the Children's Television Act of 1990) to the technological (the V-chip). Saturday Morning Censors examines the history of adults' attempts to safeguard children from the violence, sexism, racism, and commercialism on television since the 1950s. By focusing on what censorship and regulation are and how they work-rather than on whether they should exist-Heather Hendershot shows how adults use these processes to reinforce their own ideas about childhood innocence. Drawing on archival studio material, interviews with censors and animators, and social science research, Hendershot analyzes media activist strategies, sexism and racism at the level of cartoon manufacture, and the product-linked cartoons of the 1980s, such as Strawberry Shortcake and Transformers. But in order to more fully examine adult reception of children's TV, she also discusses "good" programs like Sesame Street and Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids. Providing valuable historical context for debates surrounding such current issues as the V-chip and the banning of Power Rangers toys in elementary schools, Saturday Morning Censors demonstrates how censorship can reveal more fears than it hides. Saturday Morning Censors will appeal to educators, parents, and media activists, as well as to those in cultural studies, television studies, gender studies, and American social history.

Examining the various boundaries of American artistic tolerance, chapters address the societal and legal responses to rock and rap music. Artistic expression has historically clashed with mainstream views, resulting in apprehension acted upon internally and externally, especially when expression is aimed toward children or young adults. This work studies the mass media content and programming in network television, "Rolling Stone" magazine, and the "New York Times" reviews and spot news concerning rock and rap music. The National Endowment for the Arts, the FCC, and the music industry's internal responses to parents and adults are discussed as well. Inhibitions and censoring, it is argued, stem from adult concerns for a healthy functioning society and from anxiety about the impact of sexual explicitness and uncontrolled behavioral expression on adolescents. This work attempts to explain why societal intolerance has a pattern of limiting the lyrics and sounds of rock and rap music.

Uniquely combining both societal and legal viewpoints on censorship of America's popular music culture, these essays address issues of concern to various scholars including those studying mass media, censorship, and American popular culture. Legal appendices are included as useful references, such as the National Endowments for the Arts Obscenity and Rejections Sections.