Censors at Work Audiobook by Robert Darnton

Discover Best Sellers Audiobooks in History, World

Listen to this audiobook free with a 30-day trial. Go to http://hotaudiobook.com/free Title: Censors at Work Subtitle: How States Shaped Literature Author: Robert Darnton Narrator: Stephen McLaughlin Format: Unabridged Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins Language: English Release date: 12-24-14 Publisher: Audible Studios Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 5 votes Genres: History, World Publisher's Summary: This absorbing history by a brilliant scholar and writer deepens our understanding of how censorship works. With his uncanny ability to spark life in the past, Robert Darnton re-creates three historical worlds in which censorship shaped literary expression in distinctive ways. In 18th-century France, censors, authors, and booksellers collaborated in making literature by navigating the intricate culture of royal privilege. Even as the king's censors outlawed works by Voltaire, Rousseau, and other celebrated Enlightenment writers, the head censor himself incubated Diderot's great Encyclopedie by hiding the banned project's papers in his Paris townhouse. Relationships at court trumped principle in the Old Regime. Shaken by the Sepoy uprising in 1857, the British Raj undertook a vast surveillance of every aspect of Indian life, including its literary output. Years later the outrage stirred by the British partition of Bengal led the Raj to put this knowledge to use. Seeking to suppress Indian publications that it deemed seditious, the British held hearings in which literary criticism led to prison sentences. Their efforts to meld imperial power and liberal principle fed a growing Indian opposition. In Communist East Germany, censorship was a component of the party program to engineer society. Behind the unmarked office doors of Ninety Clara-Zetkin Street in East Berlin, censors developed annual plans for literature in negotiation with high party officials and prominent writers. A system so pervasive that it lodged inside the authors' heads as self-censorship, it left visible scars in the nation's literature. By rooting censorship in the particulars of history, Darnton's revealing study enables us to think more clearly about efforts to control expression past and present. Members Reviews: Fascinating look at censorship under 3 different regimes This book provides a fascinating look at how three different governments have used censorship to influence literary expression. The author focuses on censorship in France before the French Revolution, in India during British colonial rule, and in East Germany under Communist rule. Besides focusing on the particulars of censorship in each of the three case studies, the author notes some similarities and differences between the forms and methods of censorship under the three regimes, and offers some opinions about censorship in general. The author makes interesting observations, offers thoughtful insights, and presents serious arguments and contentions about the nature, methods and consequences (intended and unintended) of censorship. The authorâs interesting arguments and contentions about censorship should be taken with some caution because of the small number of case studies he relies on. This book is a serious, scholarly look at censorship and, as such, it is not likely to appeal to readers with only a casual interest in the subject. The book would be of interest to readers with a scholarly or professional interest in censorship, the history of censorship, and political efforts to control and manipulate writers. Historians, lawyers, publishing professionals, writers, librarians, teachers, and civic-minded citizens could find this book interesting and informative. Readers interested in this book should consider also taking a look at Leonard W.