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
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