A Study of Censorship and Sociopolitical Oppression in 17th-Centuy England and Their Influence on Metaphorical Representations

本研究的目的是了解英国内战和联邦时期对保皇党人的审查制度和社会政治压迫对他们诗歌创作的影响。随着议会通过一系列立法加强对媒体的控制，最终在1649年的《印刷法》中达到顶峰，诸如歌曲、民谣和连词之类的长篇诗歌的出版在1647年达到顶峰，而它们的风格变得越来越隐晦，含沙射影。也就是说，虽然对出版的限制在总体上对他们的文学活动构成了相当大的阻碍，但它们有助于为他们的诗歌创作增添讽刺和委婉等品质。至于手稿流传或出版成书的诗歌，情况就有点不同了。它们的读者群更有限，体裁也更贵族化，比如情诗、颂诗、牧歌和冥想诗。有趣的是，尽管他们对公众宣传漠不关心，但他们在看似随意的言论和描述中充满了政治典故，而且他们掩饰政治意图的方式比那些流行的体裁要精心得多。这使我们认为，这些诗中的秘密，虽然部分是由于媒体的压迫，但更多的是由保皇党人的秘密取向心理所驱动的。也就是说，他们希望维持的等级秩序（君主制和主教制）是本体论的权力/知识体系，在这个体系中，最终的实质或真理应该不断地被“推迟”或被其他符号所取代，使秘密成为他们话语的共同特征。我的结论是，审查制度并不一定阻碍了他们的诗歌创作，反而促进了他们的创作，为他们提供了一个非常适合他们出于社会政治动机而喜欢保密的写作条件。

The aim of this study is to see how the censorship and sociopolitical oppression on the royalists in the English Civil War and the Commonwealth influenced their poetic creations. As parliamentary control of the press tightens its hold with successive legislation culminating in the Printing Act of 1649, publication of broadside-poems such as songs, ballads and litanies decreases with 1647 as its peak, while their style becomes more and more cryptic insinuating. That is,while the restrictions on the press formed a considerable hindrance to their literary activity in general, they helped add such qualities as irony and euphemism to their poetic creations. As for the poems circulated in manuscripts or published in books, the situation is a little different. They had a much more limited readership and their genres were more aristocratic : such as amatory verses, odes, pastorals and meditative poetry. An interesting thing is that in spite of their expected indifference to public propaganda, they are full of political allusions couched in seemingly casual remarks and descriptions and that the way they camouflage their political purport is far more elaborate than in those popular genres. This leads us to think that the secrecy in these poems, though partly resulting from the oppression of the press, is more intrinsically motivated by the secrecy-oriented mentality of the royalists. That is,the hierarchical orders they hoped to maintain (monarchy and episcopacy) were the ontological power/knowledge system in which the ultimate substance or truth should be constantly "deferred" or substituted for by other signs, making secrecy a common trait of their discourses. My conclusion is that the censorship did not necessarily hinder their poetic creation but rather prompted it affording them a condition of writing much suited for their sociopolitically motivated liking for secrecy.