The Muzzled Muse

The Muzzled Muse
Author: Margreet de Lange
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 184
Release: 1997-04-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9027298009

“The long history of censorship is a parallel and equally powerful history of literature. Censors bear witness to the power of the word even more forcefully than the writers and the readers they consider dangerous.” (Index on Censorship 6/1996) A critical assessment of literature produced under censorship needs to take into account that the stategies of the censors are answered by strategies of the writers and the readers. To recognize self-censoring strategies in writing, it is necessary to know the specific restrictions of the censorship regime in question. In South Africa under apartheid all writers were confronted with the question of how to respond to the pressure of censorship. This confrontation took a different form however, depending on what group the writer belonged to and what language he/she used. By looking at white writers writing in Afrikaans and white and black writers writing in English, this book gives the impact of censorship on South African literature a comparative examination which it has not received before. The book considers works by J.M.Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer, André Brink, and others less known to readers outside South Africa like Karel Schoeman, Louis Krüger, Christopher Hope, Miriam Tlali and Mtutuzeli Matshoba. It treats the censorship laws of the apartheid regime as well as, in the final chapter, the new law of the Mandela government which shows some surprising similarities to its predecessor. Margreet de Lange teaches Comparative Literature at Utrecht University and coordinates the University’s interdisciplinary program of South African Studies. She received her Ph.D. from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. “De Lange expertly sketches in the historical and literary backgrounds as she goes, taking us right up to the recent (unsatisfactory) revision of the censorship laws, making The Muzzled Muse a vitally important summary of literary censorship in South Africa, and a handbook of what to guard against in the future.” Shaun de Waal, Mail & Guardian Sept. 26 to October 1, 1997

The Muzzled Muse

The Muzzled Muse
Author: Margreet de Lange
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 180
Release: 1997
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9027222215

A critical assessment of literature produced under censorship needs to take into account that the strategies of the censors are answered by strategies of the writers and the readers. To recognize self-censoring strategies in writing, it is necessary to know the specific restrictions of the censorship regime in question. In South Africa under apartheid all writers were confronted with the question of how to respond to the pressure of censorship. This confrontation took a different form however, depending on what group the writer belonged to and what language he/she used. By looking at white writers writing in Afrikaans and white and black writers writing in English, this book gives the impact of censorship on South African literature a comparative examination which it has not received before. The book considers works by J. M. Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer, Andre Brink, and others less known to readers outside South Africa like Karel Schoeman, Louis Kruger, Christopher Hope, Miriam Tlali and Mtutuzeli Matshoba. It treats the censorship laws of the apartheid regime as well as, in the final chapter, the new law of the Mandela government which shows some surprising similarities to its predecessor.

Explorations in Music and Esotericism

Explorations in Music and Esotericism
Author: Elizabeth T. Abbate
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 349
Release: 2023
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1648250653

Scholars explore from many fresh angles the interweavings of two of the richest strands of human culture-music and esotericism-with examples from the medieval period to the modern age. Music and esotericism are two responses to the intuition that the world holds hidden order, beauty, and power. Those who compose, perform, and listen to music have often noted that music can be a bridge between sensory and transcendent realms. Such renowned writers as Boethius expanded the definition of music to encompass not only sounded music but also the harmonic fabric of human and cosmic life. Those who engage in pursuits called "esoteric," from ancient astrology, magic, and alchemy to recent and more novel forms of spirituality, have also remarked on the relevance of music to their quests. Esotericists have composed music in order to convey esoteric meaning, performed music to create esoteric influences, and listened to music to raise their esoteric awareness. The academic study of esotericism is a young field, and few researchers have probed the rich interface between the musical and esoteric domains. In Explorations in Music and Esotericism, scholars from numerous fields introduce the history of esotericism and current debates about its definition and extent. The book's sixteen chapters present rich instances of connections between music and esotericism, organized with reference to four aspects of esotericism: as a form of thought; as the keeping and revealing of secrets; as an identity; and as a signifier. Edited by Marjorie Roth and Leonard George. Contributors: Elizabeth Abbate, Malachai Komanoff Bandy, Adam Bregman, Charles E. Brewer, Benjamin Dobbs, Anna Gawboy, Pasquale Giaquinto, Adam Knight Gilbert, Joscelyn Godwin, Virginia Christy Lamothe, Andrew Owen, Christopher Scheer, Codee Ann Spinner, Woodrow Steinken, and Daphne Tan.

Literary Trials

Literary Trials
Author: Ralf Gr�ttemeier
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2017-07-27
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1501334875

From the 19th century onwards, famous literary trials have caught the attention of readers, academics and the public at large. Indeed it is striking that more often than not, it was the texts of renowned writers that were dealt with by the courts, as for example Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary and Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal in France, James Joyce's Ulysses and Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer in the US, D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover in Great-Britain, up to the more recent trials on Klaus Mann's Mephisto and Maxim Biller's novel Esra in Germany. By bringing together international leading experts, Literary Trials represents the first step towards a systematic discussion of literary trials on a global scale. Beginning by first reassessing some of the most famous of these trials, it also analyses less well-known but significant literary trials. Special attention is paid to recent developments in the relationship between literature and judicature, pointing towards an increasing role for libel and defamation in the societal demarcation of what literature is, and is not, allowed to do.

The Literature Police

The Literature Police
Author: Peter D. McDonald
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 432
Release: 2010-10-14
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0191615439

'Censorship may have to do with literature', Nadine Gordimer once said, 'but literature has nothing whatever to do with censorship.' As the history of many repressive regimes shows, this vital borderline has seldom been so clearly demarcated. Just how murky it can sometimes be is compellingly exemplified in the case of apartheid South Africa. For reasons that were neither obvious nor historically inevitable, the apartheid censors were not only the agents of the white minority government's repressive anxieties about the medium of print. They were also officially-certified guardians of the literary. This book is centrally about the often unpredictable cultural consequences of this paradoxical situation. Peter D. McDonald brings to light a wealth of new evidence - from the once secret archives of the censorship bureaucracy, from the records of resistance publishers and writers' groups both in the country and abroad - and uses extensive oral testimony. He tells the strangely tangled stories of censorship and literature in apartheid South Africa and, in the process, uncovers an extraordinarily complex web of cultural connections linking Europe and Africa, East and West. The Literature Police affords a unique perspective on one of the most anachronistic, exploitative, and racist modern states of the post-war era, and on some of the many forms of cultural resistance it inspired. It also raises urgent questions about how we understand the category of the literary in today's globalized, intercultural world.

Censorship

Censorship
Author: Derek Jones
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 6858
Release: 2001-12-01
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 1136798633

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Print, Power, and Cultural Hegemony

Print, Power, and Cultural Hegemony
Author: Federico Dal Bo
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2024-09-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 3111393151

Federico Dal Bo examines the design of early Hebrew books from the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, focusing not only on the words in these early books but also on how they were arranged on the page. He follows in the tradition of scholars such as Christopher de Hamel, Marvin J. Heller, and David Stern, who have explored the importance of these Hebrew books in influencing Jewish learning and attracting the interest of Christians. The author discusses important prints, such as the first Talmud and rabbinical bibles, which marked a shift from being for Jewish readers only to being for both Jews and Christians. The collaboration between Jewish editors and Christian printers changed the way these books looked and the audience for whom they were intended. At first, these early prints copied the style of handwritten Hebrew manuscripts. The simple layout could be difficult to read, especially for long books like the Bible or Talmud. But over time, influenced by the humanism of the Italian Renaissance, the layout became more complex. The book also looks at how the layout changed from full-page commentaries to a more complicated design in which the main text and commentaries shared the same page. This shift challenged the idea of who was the primary author and emphasized the role of editors. The layout, with the main text in the center and the commentaries on the sides, created a kind of unwritten rule for how to read religious texts. Dal Bo's study also includes new information about a 1553 trial in which the Talmud was burned. Overall, it explores how the layout of these early Hebrew books shaped cultural power and influenced how people read.

War over Words

War over Words
Author: Devika Sethi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2019-05-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108589855

Censorship has been a universal phenomenon through history. However, its rationale and implementation has varied, and public reaction to it has differed across societies and times. This book recovers, narrates, and interrogates the history of censorship of publications in India over three crucial decades - encompassing the Gandhian anti-colonial movement, the Second World War, Partition, and the early years of Independent India. In doing so, it examines state policy and practice, and also its subversion, in a tumultuous period of transition from colonial to self-rule in India. Populated with an array of powerful and powerless individuals, the story of Indians grappling with free speech and (in)tolerance is a fascinating one, and deserves to be widely known. It will help readers make sense of global present-day debates over free speech and hate speech, illustrate historical trends that change - and those that don't - and help them appreciate how the past inevitably informs the present.

Print Culture in Southern Africa

Print Culture in Southern Africa
Author: Caroline Davis
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2021-07-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000426378

Print Culture in Southern Africa is concerned with the institutions and processes informing textual production, circulation and consumption in the region, over a broad historical period from the late 18th century to the present day. The book is organised around three closely related themes. Firstly, it presents original research into the formation of reading publics and the impact of reading cultures, by uncovering obscure but important reading communities and circuits of book distribution and reception. A second theme is the relationship between print and politics, with a particular focus on the networks of power: how control over the production and circulation of printed books has shaped literary and cultural development. The third theme is transnational print culture, and how the control exercised by publishers in Europe and America has shaped literature and society in southern Africa. Drawing together interdisciplinary research and diverse methodologies, the collection encompasses a range of perspectives, including literary studies, anthropology, publishing studies, the history of the book and art history, and many of the chapters are based on previously unexamined archives and collections. The volume contributes to current debates and opens up new and exciting ways of furthering the study of postcolonial literature and African book history. The chapters included in this book were originally published in the Journal of Southern African Studies.