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史感兴趣的学术律师进行的。最近还有两本关于现代主义文学和淫秽问题的电影书籍，名为《现代主义，大众文化》和《淫秽美学》(2000)，这两本书讨论了从18世纪末到1960年《查太莱夫人的情人审判和冒险》的审查问题，书名为《小说和淫秽：美国现代主义中的性主题》(2005)，专门关注美国文学和性淫秽。最近在控制现代主义作品流通的经济和小圈子网络上出版了一些书籍。但是，关于文学淫秽与英国和美国20世纪初特定的法律、出版和文化背景之间的关系，还没有完整的研究。该项目将在这种控制网络的背景下调查文学淫秽的问题。它是我上一本书《现代主义与民主：1900-1930年的文学文化》(将于2006年7月由OUP出版)的续篇，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，因为它将做三件新的事情：1)为理解控制现代主义写作生产和传播的法律和出版网络提供一个新的背景；2)提供新的背景，揭示关于言论自由和人的自由的思想在那个时期相对于具体事件发生变化的方式，以及这些变化如何影响对文学的理解；3)为现代主义作家的艺术目的创造一个新的视角。目的和对象我的目标是探索一系列相互关联的研究问题。为什么在1900-1940年间，英国和美国有如此多的现代主义文本被审查？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？审查制度对言论自由和个人自由的观念有何影响？这些法律观念在哪些方面冲击了有关艺术和文学的辩论？20世纪30年代的政治背景如何影响言论自由的理念和艺术语言的作用？此外，现代主义作家为什么要探索文学淫秽？例如，已经经历过都柏林人审查(1914)的詹姆斯·乔伊斯(James Joyce)为什么在《尤利西斯》(1921)中将他的作品推向全新的淫秽程度？为什么乔伊斯的许多同时代的文学作家认为《尤利西斯》是淫秽的？这些问题是如何为现代主义作家之间的出版和合作网络提供信息的？它的潜在应用和好处对这一特定问题的审问是及时和必要的。鉴于目前关于现代自由世俗社会言论自由限制的争论，我的目标是参照言论自由和文学表达之间的关系这一具体问题来构建此类辩论的史前。这本书将争辩说，关于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。我预计，这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.