Expurgation

Thomas Bowdler's famous reworked edition of William Shakespeare's plays. 1818

Expurgation, also known as bowdlerization, is a form of censorship which involves purging anything deemed noxious or offensive from an artistic work, or other type of writing of media.

The term bowdlerization is a pejorative term for the practice, particularly the expurgation of lewd material from books. The term derives from Thomas Bowdler's 1818 edition of William Shakespeare's plays, which he reworked in order to make them more suitable, in his opinion, for women and children.[1] He similarly edited Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

A fig-leaf edition is such a bowdlerized text, deriving from the practice of covering the genitals of nudes in classical and Renaissance statues and paintings with fig leaves.

Examples

Religious

Sexual

Racist

Cursing

Political

See also

References

  1. "Censorship" (PDF).
  2. Popper, William (1889). The Censorship of Hebrew Books. Knickerbocker Press. pp. 13–14.
  3. 1 2 Frederick J. Furnivall, ed. (1867). Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript: loose and humorous songs. London. p. 100.
  4. "The Crabfish".
  5. "Crayfish".
  6. Bussacco, Michael C. (2009). Heritage Press Sandglass Companion Book: 1960–1983. Tribute Books (Archibald, Penn.). p. 252. Retrieved September 23, 2010.
  7. Curtis, Jack (February 17, 2008). "Blood from Oil". Boston Globe. Retrieved September 23, 2010.
  8. Sinclair, Mary Craig (1957). Southern Belle. New York: Crown Publishers. p. 309. Retrieved September 23, 2010.
  9. Tomasky, Michael (January 7, 2011). "The New Huck Finn". The Guardian. Retrieved September 6, 2013.
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