Word: perrine
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...BOWDLER'S LEGACY: A HISTORY OF EXPURGATED BOOKS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA, by Noel Perrin. Examining the literary atrocities of squeamish expurgators, the author has created a brilliant little work of cultural history full of wit and learning...
...BOWDLER'S LEGACY: A HISTORY OF EXPURGATED BOOKS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA, by Noel Perrin. Examining the literary atrocities of squeamish expurgators, the author has created a brilliant little work of cultural history full of wit and learning...
Licensed Hands. Delicacy, Perrin suggests, became an overrated virtue in the 19th century. No response rated higher than "being easily shocked." One proved one's sensitivity by one's blushes, as Dr. Bowdler indicated, and, if necessary, by fainting. It was clearly feminine behavior, and Perrin dares to hint that behind every successful bowdlerizer there is a woman. Perrin's real scoop, however, is the suggestion that the real Bowdler probably was not Thomas at all, nor his wife, but his sister Henrietta Maria, known as Harriet...
...What Perrin's survey makes alarmingly evident is that bowdlerizing could become almost as unbridled a lust as lust itself. An expurgator may begin quietly enough by "lopping" or "cutting." He might omit, say, Sodom and Gomorrah from Old Testament stories. But before he is through, he is likely to end up as a compulsive cleaner-"the sort of man who is capable of bringing out an expurgated edition of Wordsworth," as a Victorian clergyman with a penchant for editing was once described...
...fact, Chaucer ranks second to Shakespeare among the victims of bowdlerizing. The company is distinguished: Dryden, Pope, St. Augustine, Benjamin Franklin ("the leading native victim" of American bowdlerism), and, of course, Donne. "An easy test of what kind of college a student goes to," Perrin proposes, "is to quote the single line 'License my roving hands and let them go,' and see if his eyes light...