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Literature, Politics and Law in Renaissance EnglandTaking Liberties: George Wither’s A Satyre, Libel and the Law

Literature, Politics and Law in Renaissance England: Taking Liberties: George Wither’s A Satyre,... [By the time he wrote this passage, George Wither already had a reputation as a prison poet. Wither had spent over five months in the Marshalsea in 1614 over his satire Abuses Stript, and Whipt (1613), and when Wither’s Motto itself fell victim to ‘these guilty Times’, he once again found himself in prison. In fact, throughout his lengthy and prolific literary career, which began in 1612 and ended with his death in 1667, Wither was arrested six times and imprisoned on at least four occasions for his writings.1 Given this extensive experience and his reputation as an oppositional poet, Wither is an ideal candidate for a study of early Stuart censorship, and not surprisingly he has a prominent place in Cyndia Susan Clegg’s recent study Press Censorship in Jacobean England. Clegg takes to task a Whig model of censorship for its over-simplifying account of a repressive state determined to silence all dissent. Instead, she draws attention to the varied, and sometimes competing, interests informing censorship practices to argue that instances of press censorship were isolated events determined by local interests rather than a wider ideology. Clegg bases her conclusions about a culture of censorship primarily on evidence of press control.2] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

Literature, Politics and Law in Renaissance EnglandTaking Liberties: George Wither’s A Satyre, Libel and the Law

Part of the Language, Discourse, Society Book Series
Editors: Sheen, Erica; Hutson, Lorna
O’Callaghan, Michelle
Literature, Politics and Law in Renaissance England — Nov 16, 2015
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23 pages

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References (9)

Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan UK
Copyright
© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2005
ISBN
978-1-349-43051-2
Pages
146 –169
DOI
10.1057/9780230597662_7
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[By the time he wrote this passage, George Wither already had a reputation as a prison poet. Wither had spent over five months in the Marshalsea in 1614 over his satire Abuses Stript, and Whipt (1613), and when Wither’s Motto itself fell victim to ‘these guilty Times’, he once again found himself in prison. In fact, throughout his lengthy and prolific literary career, which began in 1612 and ended with his death in 1667, Wither was arrested six times and imprisoned on at least four occasions for his writings.1 Given this extensive experience and his reputation as an oppositional poet, Wither is an ideal candidate for a study of early Stuart censorship, and not surprisingly he has a prominent place in Cyndia Susan Clegg’s recent study Press Censorship in Jacobean England. Clegg takes to task a Whig model of censorship for its over-simplifying account of a repressive state determined to silence all dissent. Instead, she draws attention to the varied, and sometimes competing, interests informing censorship practices to argue that instances of press censorship were isolated events determined by local interests rather than a wider ideology. Clegg bases her conclusions about a culture of censorship primarily on evidence of press control.2]

Published: Nov 16, 2015

Keywords: Public Opinion; Reading Practice; Hard Thing; Privy Council; Late Sixteenth

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