Royal censorship of books in eighteenth-century France / Raymond Birn.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Birn, Raymond, author.

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Standardized Title:

Censure royale des livres dans la France des Lumières. English

Language:

English

French

Subjects (All):

Censorship--France--History--18th century.

Censorship.

Literature and state--France--History--18th century.

Literature and state.

History.

France--Intellectual life--18th century.

France.

Intellectual life.

France--Politics and government--18th century.

Politics and government.

Physical Description:

xii, 195 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2012.

Summary:

Today, we are inclined to believe that intellectual freedom has no greater adversary than the censor. In eighteenth-century France, the matter was more complicated. Royal censors envisioned themselves not as fulfilling a mission of state-sponsored repression but rather as guiding the literary traffic of the Enlightenment. By awarding pre-publication and pre-distribution approvals, royal censors sought to insulate authors and publishers from the scandal of post-publication condemnation by parliaments, the police, or the Church. Less official authorizations were also awarded. Though censors did delete words and phrases from manuscripts and sometimes rejected manuscripts altogether, the liberal use of tacit permissions and conditional approvals resulted in the publication and circulation of books that, under a less flexible system, might never have seen the light of day. In essence, eighteenth-century French censors served as cultural intermediaries who bore responsibility for expanding public awareness of the progressive thought of their time.

Contents:

The origins of "enlightened" censorship

Censorship under Louis XV : the crisis of authority

Censors at work, 1750-1763

Cultural intermediary, agency of repression?

Royal censorship in a pre-revolutionary climate

Searching for a rudder

How to censor rebellion.

Notes:

"The preface, introduction, and chapters 1-4 were originally published in France under the title La censure royale des livres dans la France des Lumières."

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

ISBN:

9780804763592

0804763593

OCLC:

704908476