Obscene Modernism: Modernist literature, censorship and obscenity

对文学审查的个案进行了广泛的研究，主要是由对审查立法历史感兴趣的学术律师进行的。最近也有两本关于现代主义文学和淫秽的书，由电影《现代主义，大众文化和淫秽美学》（2000年），它考虑了从18世纪晚期到1960年《查泰莱夫人的情人》审判的审查问题，以及《小说和淫秽：美国现代主义中的性主题》（2005年），它专门研究了美国文学和色情。最近出版了一些关于经济和小圈子网络的书，这些网络控制着现代主义作品的流通。然而，在二十世纪初的英美，文学淫秽与特定的法律、出版和文化背景之间的关系并没有完整的研究。这个项目将调查在这种控制网络的背景下文学淫秽的问题。这本书是继我的上一本书《现代主义与民主：1900-1930年的文学文化》（2006年7月由OUP出版）之后出版的，该书分析了现代主义文学与政治和法律民主思想之间的关系。在我的新书中，我将在审查辩论的特定背景下研究文学与法律之间的关系。这本书是必要的，因为它将做三件新的事情：1)为理解控制现代主义作品生产和传播的法律和出版网络提供了一个新的背景；2)重新阐释言论自由和人身自由的观念在与特定事件相关的时期的变化方式，以及这些变化如何影响对文学的理解；3)重新审视现代主义作家的艺术目的。目的和目标我的目的是探讨一系列相互关联的研究问题。为什么在1900-1940年期间，英国和美国有那么多现代主义文本受到审查？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？这些法律观念在哪些方面冲击了关于艺术和文学的辩论？20世纪30年代的政治背景如何影响言论自由和艺术语言的角色？此外，为什么现代主义作家想要探索文学的淫秽？例如，詹姆斯·乔伊斯（James Joyce）在《都柏林人》（1914年）中已经经历了审查，为什么在《尤利西斯》（1921年）中将他的作品推向了一个全新的高度？为什么许多与乔伊斯同时代的文学作家认为《尤利西斯》是淫秽的？这些问题是如何影响现代主义作家之间的出版和合作网络的？它的潜在应用和好处对这一系列特殊问题的询问是及时和必要的。鉴于目前关于现代自由世俗社会中言论自由限制的辩论，我的目标是构建一个关于言论自由和文学表达之间关系这一具体问题的辩论的史前史。这本书将论证文学文本特殊自由的现代概念是在1900-1940年间形成的，这是对一系列特定历史事件的回应。我想这本书不仅会引起研究现代主义文学和文化的学者和学生的兴趣，而且会引起对20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.