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Expurgation is a form of censorship
Censorship

Censorship is the suppression of freedom of speech or deletion of communicative material which may be considered objectionable, harmful or sensitive, as determined by a censor....
 by way of purging anything noxious, offensive, or erroneous, usually from an artistic work. It has also been called bowdlerization, after Thomas Bowdler
Thomas Bowdler

Thomas Bowdler was an English physician who published an expurgated edition of William Shakespeare's work that he considered to be more appropriate for women and children than the original....
, who in 1818 published an expurgated edition of William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English people poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's preeminent dramatist....
's work that he considered to be more appropriate for women and children. He similarly edited Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.








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Expurgation is a form of censorship
Censorship

Censorship is the suppression of freedom of speech or deletion of communicative material which may be considered objectionable, harmful or sensitive, as determined by a censor....
 by way of purging anything noxious, offensive, or erroneous, usually from an artistic work. It has also been called bowdlerization, after Thomas Bowdler
Thomas Bowdler

Thomas Bowdler was an English physician who published an expurgated edition of William Shakespeare's work that he considered to be more appropriate for women and children than the original....
, who in 1818 published an expurgated edition of William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English people poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's preeminent dramatist....
's work that he considered to be more appropriate for women and children. He similarly edited Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Examples

  • In 1264, Clement IV ordered the Jews of Aragon
    Aragon

    Aragon is an autonomous communities of Spain of Spain. Located in northeastern Spain, the region comprises three provinces of Spain from north to south: Huesca , Zaragoza , and Teruel ....
     to submit their books to Dominican
    Dominican Order

    The Order of Preachers , after the 15th century more commonly known as the Dominican Order or Dominicans, is a Roman Catholic religious order founded by Saint Dominic in the early 13th century in France....
     censors for expurgation.
  • The Private Memoirs of Kenelm Digby
    Kenelm Digby

    This article is about Kenelm Digby, the seventeenth century English courtier, diplomat and natural philospher. For other people with the same name, see Kenelm Digby ...
     (1603–1665) were finally published in 1828 in a bowdlerized form.
  • Fanny Hill
    Fanny Hill

    File:?douard-Henri Avril crop.JPGMemoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, popularly known as Fanny Hill, is a novel by John Cleland.Written in while the author was in debtor's prison in London, it is considered the first modern "erotic literature" in English, and has become a byword for the battle of censorship of erotica....
     (1748) was self-censored by author John Cleland
    John Cleland

    John Cleland was an England novelist most famous and infamous as the author of Fanny Hill.John Cleland was the oldest son of William Cleland and Lucy Cleland....
     in a 1750 edition. A modern edition was banned in the United States until Memoirs v. Massachusetts
    Memoirs v. Massachusetts

    'Memoirs v. Massachusetts', Case citation , was the Supreme Court of the United States decision that attempted to clarify a holding made in Roth v....
     overturned the ban.
  • Justine (1791, also known as The Misfortunes of Virtue) was not completely translated to English until 1953 by Austryn Wainhouse
    Austryn Wainhouse

    Austryn Wainhouse is an American translator, primarily of French works and notably of Marquis de Sade, sometimes using pseudonym Pieralessandro Casavini....
    .
  • Several themes in the play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
    Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

    Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a Play by Tennessee Williams. The play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1955 in literature....
     were toned down in the 1958 film of the same name
    Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (film)

    Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is an Academy Award-nominated MGM film directed by Richard Brooks based on Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams....
    , resulting in the playwright Tennessee Williams
    Tennessee Williams

    Tennessee Williams was an American playwright who received many of the top theatrical awards. He moved to New Orleans in 1939 and changed his name to "Tennessee", the state of his father's birth....
     advising people to not view the film.
  • Lysistrata
    Lysistrata

    Lysistrata is one of the few surviving plays written by the master of Aristophanes#Aristophanes and Old Comedy, Aristophanes. Originally performed in Classical Athens in 411 BC, it is a comic account of one woman's extraordinary mission to end The Peloponnesian War....
    , by Aristophanes
    Aristophanes

    Aristophanes , son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaus, was a prolific and much acclaimed comedy playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays have come down to us virtually complete....
    , was bowdlerized in all English translations before 1960.
  • In 1986, to mark the centenary of Lofting's birth, new editions of Doctor Dolittle
    Doctor Dolittle

    Doctor John Dolittle is the central character of a series of children's books by Hugh Lofting. He is a doctor who shuns human patients in favour of animals, with whom he can speak in their own languages....
     were published, in which derogatory terms and images for certain ethnic groups were removed.
  • In 2009, the DVD release of Kevin Smith's
    Kevin Smith

    Kevin Patrick Smith is an American screenwriter and film director, as well as a script writer, author, and actor. He is also the co-founder, with Scott Mosier, of View Askew Productions and owner of Jay and Silent Bob's Secret Stash comic and novelty store in Red Bank, New Jersey, New Jersey....
     Zack and Miri Make a Porno
    Zack and Miri Make a Porno

    Zack and Miri Make a Porno is a 2008 in film comedy film written and directed by Kevin Smith. It is Smith's second film not to be set within the View Askewniverse and the first not set or shot in New Jersey....
     saw its title changed to Zack and Miri, even under the cardboard slipcover.