Book announcement

From: David Jackson <[email protected]>

*Stanford University Press is pleased to announce the publication of Better
Left Unsaid: Victorian Novels, Hays Code Films, and the Benefits of
Censorship, by Nora Gilbert. Gilbert is Assistant Professor of English at
the University of North Texas.

Better Left Unsaid takes the rather unique position of defending censorship
from the central allegations that are traditionally leveled against it.
Taking two genres generally presumed to have been stymied by the censor's
knife—the Victorian novel and classical Hollywood film—the author reveals
the varied ways in which censorship, for all its blustery
self-righteousness, can actually be good for sex, politics, feminism, and
art.  *
*
As much as Victorianism is equated with such cultural impulses as
repression and prudery, few scholars have explored the Victorian novel as a
"censored" commodity—thanks, in large part, to the indirectness and
intangibility of England's literary censorship process. This indirection
stands in sharp contrast to the explicit, detailed formality of Hollywood's
infamous Production Code of 1930. In comparing these two versions of
censorship, Nora Gilbert explores the paradoxical effects of prohibitive
practices. Rather than being ruined by censorship, Victorian novels and
Hays Code films were stirred and stimulated by the very forces meant to
restrain them.

For more information about this book, please visit: **
http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=22235* <http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=22235>

-- 

David B. Jackson

Director of Sales and Marketing

Stanford University Press

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650/736-1782

[email protected]


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