A leading thinker recommends five books about his or her field of interest. This month, the topic is Censorship, with books chosen by esteemed litigation lawyer and defamation expert Anthony Julius.
Jude the ObscureThomas Hardy
Jude the Obscure is about a poor young man who, inspired by the example of his village teacher, commits himself to study in order to go to Christminster (which is transparently Oxford). For various reasons, he fails, and makes a series of disastrous decisions, and he is rejected for reasons beyond his control and dies.
Jude is passionate about learning, and he immerses himself in the Classics and so on, and, in the end, it’s that ambition that does for him. So it’s a curiously self-cancelling work in that way. There is a point at which Jude thinks it’s no longer possible for him to study to be a lay preacher because of the incompatibility of the two aspects [religious and secular] of his life. So he decides he has to destroy all his Christian works and he burns them all.
Now, when Hardy published the book there was a tremendous outcry, because it was considered to be anti-religious and sexually very frank. A bishop wrote to him and inside the envelope there were a few ashes; the Bishop explained that that was all that was left of the book, which he had burnt. It’s interesting because there’s no reference in the letter to the scene in which Jude burns the Christian books—but it’s as if Hardy got his retaliation in first. The relationship between literature and its censors feels like a kind of agon, in which two contradictory principles are articulated in the moment of their collision.
Lady Chatterley’s LoverDH Lawrence
Of course, this book was also the object of censorship, culminating in a couple of trials (one in the States and one in Britain). But it’s also itself about the violation of norms—in this case, the violation of the marriage contract and the norm of monogamous living. Lawrence wrote about the difference between literature and pornography, and, curiously enough, in defending Lady Chatterley in 1928/9 against the charge that it was pornographic, he himself said that he was in favour of censoring pornography. Pornography “does dirt on sex, does dirt on life,” he said, and he would be in favour of censoring it, suppressing it; but his work was not pornographic. So Lawrence allows the possibility of censorship, but not if it is misapplied or misdirected at his own work. The complicity of the author with the principle of censorship is interesting in the case of Lawrence and Chatterley.
The Trial of Lady ChatterleyCH Rolph
This is a summary transcript of the [Chatterley] trial. This volume in itself represents an intervention in the censorship wars of the 1960s, because it was written from the point of view of the publishers. There was a sense that everything that was good and healthy and forward-looking and unstuffy and liberatory about the possibilities in English culture attached itself to the defendants in the case. Everything that was obscurantist and stifling and reactionary and oppressive attached itself to the prosecutors and their champions, and that’s what this book represents.
And then, almost in a blink, the cultural conjuncture changes, and the feminist attack, by Kate Millett and others, on Lawrence starts—the argument that Lawrence was a misogynist, and so on. Suddenly Lawrence becomes a representative of something very patriarchal and phallic and oppressive. That’s fascinating, how a book can be a champion of anti-censorship, but then also in a sense be the champion of censorship or oppression.
The Satanic Verses: A NovelSalman Rushdie
I’m interested in the [Chatterley] trials because of what they meant in the context of the 1960s. I’m also interested in what The Satanic Verses meant at the moment of its publication in 1989/90: with the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the end of the cold war, the extinction of socialism as a project of human liberation, and, coincident with that, the emergence of Islam or Islamism as both a threat and a promise—and how a novel manages to be the axis on which these huge global events turn.
Lady Chatterley represents a moment of liberation, just as The Satanic Verses also represents a moment of liberation—the end of the cold war—but also the inauguration of a different kind of struggle. Is it correctly conceived as a war of civilisations? Probably not. Is it correctly conceived as a war on terror? Definitely not. But there is no doubt that there is a new agon, a new principle of division and conflict in all its complexity, and The Satanic Verses prefigures it as well as contributing to it. So, my first three novels, not just as objects of censoring attention, but also as instruments through which one can think about censorship, seem to me to be the three most important books in the 20th century, from that point of view.
The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and FieldingIan Watt
This is still the most important book about the English novel, and one that has guided me through my thinking about censorship. It’s a remarkable work—the first postwar conceptualisation of the English novel in its 18th century inaugural moment, and still a crucial book for thinking about the specific problems of English fiction. While Ian Watt acknowledges that the novel is a highly international form, he emphasises its specifically English properties. Watt helps me in my attempts to understand English national peculiarities, and also the engagement between the English novel and censorship. I try to root that engagement in certain properties which are specific to English literature.
Interview by Anna Blundy
Read this interview in full at The Browser's FiveBooks section
Jude the ObscureThomas Hardy
Jude the Obscure is about a poor young man who, inspired by the example of his village teacher, commits himself to study in order to go to Christminster (which is transparently Oxford). For various reasons, he fails, and makes a series of disastrous decisions, and he is rejected for reasons beyond his control and dies.
Jude is passionate about learning, and he immerses himself in the Classics and so on, and, in the end, it’s that ambition that does for him. So it’s a curiously self-cancelling work in that way. There is a point at which Jude thinks it’s no longer possible for him to study to be a lay preacher because of the incompatibility of the two aspects [religious and secular] of his life. So he decides he has to destroy all his Christian works and he burns them all.
Now, when Hardy published the book there was a tremendous outcry, because it was considered to be anti-religious and sexually very frank. A bishop wrote to him and inside the envelope there were a few ashes; the Bishop explained that that was all that was left of the book, which he had burnt. It’s interesting because there’s no reference in the letter to the scene in which Jude burns the Christian books—but it’s as if Hardy got his retaliation in first. The relationship between literature and its censors feels like a kind of agon, in which two contradictory principles are articulated in the moment of their collision.
Lady Chatterley’s LoverDH Lawrence
Of course, this book was also the object of censorship, culminating in a couple of trials (one in the States and one in Britain). But it’s also itself about the violation of norms—in this case, the violation of the marriage contract and the norm of monogamous living. Lawrence wrote about the difference between literature and pornography, and, curiously enough, in defending Lady Chatterley in 1928/9 against the charge that it was pornographic, he himself said that he was in favour of censoring pornography. Pornography “does dirt on sex, does dirt on life,” he said, and he would be in favour of censoring it, suppressing it; but his work was not pornographic. So Lawrence allows the possibility of censorship, but not if it is misapplied or misdirected at his own work. The complicity of the author with the principle of censorship is interesting in the case of Lawrence and Chatterley.
The Trial of Lady ChatterleyCH Rolph
This is a summary transcript of the [Chatterley] trial. This volume in itself represents an intervention in the censorship wars of the 1960s, because it was written from the point of view of the publishers. There was a sense that everything that was good and healthy and forward-looking and unstuffy and liberatory about the possibilities in English culture attached itself to the defendants in the case. Everything that was obscurantist and stifling and reactionary and oppressive attached itself to the prosecutors and their champions, and that’s what this book represents.
And then, almost in a blink, the cultural conjuncture changes, and the feminist attack, by Kate Millett and others, on Lawrence starts—the argument that Lawrence was a misogynist, and so on. Suddenly Lawrence becomes a representative of something very patriarchal and phallic and oppressive. That’s fascinating, how a book can be a champion of anti-censorship, but then also in a sense be the champion of censorship or oppression.
The Satanic Verses: A NovelSalman Rushdie
I’m interested in the [Chatterley] trials because of what they meant in the context of the 1960s. I’m also interested in what The Satanic Verses meant at the moment of its publication in 1989/90: with the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the end of the cold war, the extinction of socialism as a project of human liberation, and, coincident with that, the emergence of Islam or Islamism as both a threat and a promise—and how a novel manages to be the axis on which these huge global events turn.
Lady Chatterley represents a moment of liberation, just as The Satanic Verses also represents a moment of liberation—the end of the cold war—but also the inauguration of a different kind of struggle. Is it correctly conceived as a war of civilisations? Probably not. Is it correctly conceived as a war on terror? Definitely not. But there is no doubt that there is a new agon, a new principle of division and conflict in all its complexity, and The Satanic Verses prefigures it as well as contributing to it. So, my first three novels, not just as objects of censoring attention, but also as instruments through which one can think about censorship, seem to me to be the three most important books in the 20th century, from that point of view.
The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and FieldingIan Watt
This is still the most important book about the English novel, and one that has guided me through my thinking about censorship. It’s a remarkable work—the first postwar conceptualisation of the English novel in its 18th century inaugural moment, and still a crucial book for thinking about the specific problems of English fiction. While Ian Watt acknowledges that the novel is a highly international form, he emphasises its specifically English properties. Watt helps me in my attempts to understand English national peculiarities, and also the engagement between the English novel and censorship. I try to root that engagement in certain properties which are specific to English literature.
Interview by Anna Blundy
Read this interview in full at The Browser's FiveBooks section
