Freedom and Censorship in Early Modern English Literature (Routledge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture)

"Broadening the notion of censorship, this volume explores the transformative role played by early modern censors in the fashioning of a distinct English literature in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In early modern England, the Privy Council, the Bishop of London and the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Stationers' Company, and the Master of the Revels each dealt with their own prerogatives and implemented different forms of censorship, with the result that authors penning both plays and satires had to juggle with various authorities and unequal degrees of freedom from one sector to the other. Text and press control thus did not give way to systematic intervention but to particular responses adapted to specific texts in a specific time. If the restrictions imposed by regulation practices are duly acknowledged in this edited collection, the different contributors are also keen to enhance the positive impact of censorship on early modern literature. The most difficult task consists in finding the exact moment when the balance tips in favour of creativity, and the zone where, in matters of artistic freedom, the disadvantages outweigh the benefits. This is what the twelve chapters of the volume proceed to do. Thanks to a wide variety of examples, they show that, in the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, regulations seldom prevented writers to make themselves heard, albeit through indirect channels. By contrast, in the 1630s, the increased supremacy of the Church seemed to tip the balance the other way"-- Provided by publisher Cover 1 Half Title 2 Series Page 3 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Contents 6 List of Illustrations 8 Notes on Contributors 10 Acknowledgements 14 Textual Note 16 General Introduction: “To be seen and allowed”: Early Modern Regulation Practices 18 PART I: Burning, Forbidding, Controlling: The Power of Censors 36 1 An Incident in the History of English Book Burning 38 2 Satire, Immoderation and the Bishops’ Ban of 1599 54 3 “I like not this”: Censorship, Self-Censorship and Collaboration in Early Modern Dramatic Manuscripts 65 4 The Limits of a Censor’s Authority: The Case of the Masters of the Revels 83 PART II: Dramatic Constraints, Dramatic Freedom: Case Studies 96 5 Revisiting an Old Controversy: Censorship in Doctor Faustus 98 6 “An you talk in blank verse”: The Poetics of Liberty in As You Like It 122 7 The Malcontent’s Fool, Censorship and the Construction of the Subject 138 8 “Let him speak no more”: Trust, Censorship and Early Modern Anti-Confession 149 PART III: Censorship on the Page: Translation, Poetry, and Editorial Practices 158 9 What Florio did not Translate: The Return of the Repressed in the English Rendering of Montaigne’s Essays 160 10 Spenser’s Strategies of Indirect Representation in The Faerie Queene (1590) 172 11 (Self-)Censorship in Lady Mary Wroth’s The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania (1621–1630?) 184 12 “No cloudy stuff to puzzle the brain”: ‘Fair Editing’ and Censorship in John Benson’s Edition of Shakespeare’s Poems (1640) 194 Coda: Early Modern English Censorship in European Context 208 Bibliography 224 Index 248