Title: Press censorship in Jacobean England /
Authors: Clegg, Cyndia Susan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press,
Year: 2001
Subjects: Freedom of the press England History; Press England History
Abstract: "Press Censorship in Jacobean England examines the ways in which books were produced, read, and received during the reign of King James I. The book challenges prevailing attitudes that press censorship in Jacobean England differed little from either the "whole machinery of control" enacted by the Court of Star Chamber under Elizabeth or the draconian campaign implemented by Archbishop Laud during the reign of Charles I. Cyndia Clegg, building on her earlier study Press Censorship in Elizabethan England, contends that although the principal mechanisms for controlling the press altered little between 1558 and 1603, the actual practice of censorship under King James I varied significantly from Elizabethan practice. This was both because the monarch took greater interest in the press and because the law courts, the people, and parliament expressed in print different views on the day's political and religious issues." "The book combines historical analysis of documents with literary reading of censored texts. Each chapter sets the censorship history of a different set of texts into the explanatory context of the era's central political and religious interests. Clegg thus considers the relationship of censorship to such international matters as King James's defense of the Oath of Allegiance, his promotion of the Synod of Dort, and the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War. The book exposes the kinds of tension that really mattered in Jacobean culture and will be an invaluable resource for literary scholars and historians alike."--Jacket.
Contents: Introduction: Jacobean press censorship and the "unsatisfying impasse" in the historiography of Stuart England -- 1. Authority, license, and law: the theory and practice of censorship -- 2. Burning books as propaganda -- 3. The personal use of censorship in "the wincy age" -- 4. Censorship and the confrontation between prerogative and privilege -- 5. The press and foreign policy, 1619-1624: "all eies are directed upon Bohemia" -- 6. Ecclesiastical faction, censorship, and the rhetoric of silence.