| Part of a series on |
| Censorship |
|---|
| By media |
| Banned books · Banned films Re-edited film · Internet Music · Press · Radio · Thought Speech and expression Video games |
| Methods |
| Bleeping · Book burning Broadcast delay · Chilling effect Concision · Conspiracy of silence Content-control software Euphemism · Expurgation Gag order · Heckling Internet censorship circumvention Memory hole · Newspaper theft Pixelization · Political correctness Postal · Prior restraint Propaganda model Revisionism · Sanitization/Redaction Self-censorship · Speech code Strategic lawsuit · Verbal offence Whitewashing |
| Contexts |
| Corporate · Political · Religious Ideological · Criminal speech Hate speech · Media bias Suppression of dissent · Systemic bias |
| By country |
| Censorship · Freedom of speech Internet censorship |
Expurgation is a form of censorship which involves purging anything deemed noxious or offensive, usually from an artistic work.
This has also been called bowdlerization, especially for books, after Thomas Bowdler, who in 1818 published an expurgated edition of William Shakespeare's work that he considered to be more appropriate for women and children. He similarly edited Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
A work that has been subjected to expurgation is sometimes called a fig-leaf edition, a figurative extension from the older practice of strategically placing fig leaves to hide the groin or breasts of nudes in paintings or statuary.