Obscene Modernism: Modernist literature, censorship and obscenity

对文学审查的个案有广泛的研究，主要是对审查立法历史感兴趣的学术律师。最近还有两本关于现代主义文学和淫秽问题的书，由电影出版，名为《现代主义、大众文化和淫秽美学》（Modernism，Mass Culture，and the Aesthetics of Obscenity，2000年），其中讨论了从18世纪末到1960年《查泰莱夫人的情人审判》和《大胆冒险》（Lady Chatterley's Lover Trial and Dare）的审查制度问题，书名为《小说和淫秽》（The Novel and the Obscene）：《美国现代主义中的性主题》（2005年），专门研究美国文学和性淫秽。最近出版了一些关于控制现代主义作品流通的经济网络和小圈子网络的书籍，但是，还没有关于文学淫秽与世纪早期英国和美国特定的法律的、出版和文化背景之间关系的全面研究。本项目将调查在这种控制网络的背景下文学淫秽的问题。这是我上一本书《现代主义与民主：文学文化，1900-1930》（将于2006年7月由牛津大学出版社出版）的后续，该书分析了现代主义文学与政治和法律的民主观念之间的关系。在我的新书中，我将在审查辩论的特定背景下审视文学与法律之间的关系。这本书是必要的，因为它将做三个新的事情：1）提供一个新的背景下理解的法律的和出版网络控制的生产和传播的现代主义作品; 2）抛出新的光的方式，有关言论自由和人身自由的想法在这一时期的变化与具体事件，以及这些变化如何影响对文学的理解;第三，对现代主义作家的艺术目的进行了新的认识。目的与目标我旨在探讨一系列相互关联的研究问题。为什么在1900-1940年期间，如此多的现代主义文本在英国和美国被审查？这种审查采取了什么形式？文学与法律冲突的具体历史原因是什么？审查制度如何影响言论自由和个人自由的观念？这些法律的观念以何种方式影响了关于艺术和文学的辩论？20世纪30年代的政治环境如何影响言论自由和艺术语言的作用？此外，为什么现代主义作家要探讨文学淫秽？例如，詹姆斯·乔伊斯在《都柏林人》（1914）中已经经历了审查制度，为什么在《都柏林人》（1921）中把他的作品推向了一个全新的高度，使之充满了淫秽色彩？为什么乔伊斯同时代的文学家们认为《圣经》是淫秽的？这些问题是如何影响现代主义作家的出版和合作网络的？它的潜在应用和好处询问这一组特定的问题是及时和必要的。鉴于当前关于现代自由世俗社会中言论自由限度的争论，我的目标是构建一个关于言论自由和文学表达之间关系的具体问题的争论的史前史。本书将论证，文学文本的特殊自由的现代概念是在1900-1940年期间形成的，这是对一系列特定历史事件的回应。我设想，这不仅会引起现代主义文学和文化的学者和学生的兴趣，而且会引起对二十世纪文学文化感兴趣的普通读者的兴趣。

There is extensive research on individual cases of literary censorship, mostly by academic lawyers with an interest in the history of censorship legislation. There are also two recent books on the issue of modernist literature and obscenity, by film called Modernism, Mass Culture, and the Aesthetics of Obscenity (2000) which considers the issue of censorship from the late eighteenth century through to the 1960 Lady Chatterley's Lover trial and Dare entitled The Novel and the Obscene: Sexual Subjects in American Modernism (2005) which looks specifically at American literature and sexual obscenity. A number of recent books have been published on the economic and coterie networks that controlled the circulation of modernist writing.However, there is no full-length study of the relationship between literary obscenity and the specific legal, publishing, and cultural context of the early twentieth century in Britain and the United States. This project will investigate the question of literary obscenity in the context of such networks of control. It follows on from my previous book, Modernism and Democracy: Literary culture, 1900-1930, (to be published by OUP in July, 2006) which analysed the relationship between modernist literature and ideas of political and legal democracy. In my new book, I will look at the relationship between literature and the law in the specific context of censorship debates. The book is necessary because it will do three new things: 1) provide a new context for understanding the legal and publishing networks that controlled the production and dissemination of modernist writing; 2) throw new light on the way that ideas about freedom of speech and freedom of the person altered in the period in relation to specific events and how these changes impacted on the understanding of literature; and 3) create a new perspective on the artistic aims of modernist writers.Aims and objectivesI aim to explore a series of interrelated research questions. Why were so many modernist texts censored in Britain and the US in the period 1900-1940 and what forms did this censorship take? What were the specific historical reasons for this conflict between literature and the law? How did censorship impact on ideas of freedom of speech and freedom of the individual? In what ways did these legal ideas impinge on debates about art and literature? How did the political context of the 1930s affect ideas of freedom of speech and the role of artistic language? Further, why did modernist writers want to explore literary obscenity? Why, for example, did James Joyce, who had already experienced censorship over Dubliners (1914), push his writing to entirely new levels of exuberant obscenity in Ulysses (1921)? Why did many of Joyce's literary contemporaries think that Ulysses was obscene? How did such questions inform the publishing and collaborative networks connecting modernist writers? Its potential applications and benefitsThe interrogation of this particular set of questions is both timely and necessary. Given current debates about the limits of freedom of speech in modern liberal secular societies I aim to construct a prehistory to such debates with reference to the specific issue of the relationship between freedom of speech and literary expression. The book will argue that modern conceptions of the special freedom of the literary text were put in place during the period 1900-1940, and that this was in response to a particular set of historical events. I envisage that this will be of interest not only to academics and students of modernist literature and culture, but for a general readership interested in the literary culture of the twentieth century.