Censorship across Borders: The Reception of English Literature in Twentieth-Century Europe
Editor: Catherine O’Leary and Alberto Lázaro
Date Of Publication: Oct 2011
Isbn13: 978-1-4438-3218-2
Isbn: 1-4438-3218-9
This volume brings together twelve essays which explore European censorship of English literature in the last century. Taking into consideration the various social, political and historical contexts in which literary controls were imposed and the extent to which they were determined by national and international concerns, these essays comment on political and moral censorship, self-censorship, and the role of the translator as censor. Besides systematic state control, other hidden and insidious forms of censorship are also surveyed in the essays. This study considers why certain works and authors, many of them now regarded as canonical, were targeted in various states and often under opposing ideologies, such as those dominated by conservative Catholic morality and those governed by communism or socialism.

The essays contain previously unpublished material, cover a wide range of authors – including Beckett, Eliot, Joyce and Orwell – and analyse diverse censorship systems operating across Europe, thus serving as a useful comparative resource. Despite the variety of structures of suppression, the study shows that certain common practices can be discerned across national borders and that general conclusions can be drawn about the complex and ambiguous nature of the state’s relationship with culture and about the immediate and long-term impact of censorship, not only on the author and publisher but on society as a whole. Finally, the essays are also significant for what they tell us about the survival of literature, despite the best efforts of the censors.

Catherine O’Leary is Lecturer in Spanish at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. Her main research interests are twentieth-century Spanish theatre, censorship, and memory and exile. Her recent publications on censorship include The Theatre of Antonio Buero Vallejo: Ideology, Politics and Censorship (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2005), “The Theatre of Bertolt Brecht in Francoist Spain”, in Nuevas aportaciones a los estudios teatrales (del siglo de Oro a nuestros días), ed. Hector Brioso-José V. Saval. (2007) and “‘Irrepresentable en España’: Fernando Arrabal and the Spanish Censors”, Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research (JILAR; January 2009). She is currently working with Michael Thompson (University of Durham) on the AHRC-funded project, Theatre Censorship in Spain: 1931-1985 (http://www.dur.ac.uk/mlac/tcs/).

Alberto Lázaro is Professor of English Literature at the University of Alcalá in Madrid, Spain, where he has been teaching English literature since 1987. He has done extensive research on contemporary British and Irish fiction, devoting particular attention to critical reception and censorship. He edited The Road from George Orwell: His Achievement and Legacy (2001) and published James Joyce in Spain: A Critical Bibliography, 1972–2002 (co-authored with Antonio Raúl de Toro, 2002), H. G. Wells en España (2004), and El modernismo en la novela inglesa (2005). He is also the author of essays on Virginia Woolf, James Joyce and H. G. Wells in three volumes of “The Reception of British Authors in Europe” series.

Price Uk Gbp: 39.99
Price Us Usd: 59.99

Sample pdf (including Table of Contents)