Libel and LampoonPub Date : 2022-02-03DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192846150.003.0005
A. Bricker
{"title":"Naming in the Courts","authors":"A. Bricker","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192846150.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192846150.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter focuses on naming practices, and especially the use of gutted names, such as ‘J— S—’ for John Smith, in eighteenth-century satire. In 1713 the courts ruled that such ruses provided no defence for libel, yet satirists and their booksellers continued to employ such practices. Some satirists simply misunderstood the law—an important reminder that even misinterpretation should be a part of our understanding of how the law shapes social and literary practices. However, gutted names also served important commercial, aesthetic, and pseudo-ethical functions, if not legal ones, in eighteenth-century satire. The chapter concludes with Alexander Pope. Having openly named his victims in the Dunciad Variorum, Pope was forced to grapple with what was, at its core, a socio-literary rather than legal issue. In a clever turn, however, he did so by adopting the prosecutorial language of the courts and libel law.","PeriodicalId":374965,"journal":{"name":"Libel and Lampoon","volume":"119 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116604748","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Libel and LampoonPub Date : 2022-02-03DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192846150.003.0006
A. Bricker
{"title":"Allegory in the Courts","authors":"A. Bricker","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192846150.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192846150.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter focuses on allegory, which offered journalists and satirists a flexible tool for coded political criticism during the first decades of the eighteenth century. Allegory was a particular problem for prosecutors and plaintiffs, who were required to demonstrate that fictional names in allegorical worlds referred to real victims in England. Early on, the abandoned prosecution of Delarivier Manley for The New Atalantis (1709), an allegory (or secret history) of the Whigs and Queen Anne, revealed the limitations of courtroom procedures to link allegorical depictions to real-world individuals or institutions. As a result, allegorical satire flourished in the periodical press and especially in two of the most important journals of the 1710s and ’20s: The Craftsman and Mist’s Weekly Journal. The government failed to prosecute either periodical successfully until early 1729, when Chief Justice Raymond, building on the doctrine of ‘common intendment’, argued that jurors should rely on an abstract ‘generality of readers’ when confronted with allegory.","PeriodicalId":374965,"journal":{"name":"Libel and Lampoon","volume":"160 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121617537","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Libel and LampoonPub Date : 2022-02-03DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192846150.003.0007
A. Bricker
{"title":"Keeping Out of Court III","authors":"A. Bricker","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192846150.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192846150.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"By the mid-eighteenth century, the courts had largely devised effective procedures for handling verbal evasion and booksellers’ tricks. This final chapter brings together these legal developments to show how increased regulatory pressures accidentally promoted the ‘deverbalization’ of satire. Caricaturists, for example, used words sparingly, and their visual satires were therefore not subject to the same courtroom procedures that had enabled the prosecution of printed satire. In a similar way, the Stage Licensing Act (1737), which mandated the pre-performance regulation of play texts, also promoted deverbalization. Dramatic works from this period, and especially the plays of Samuel Foote, are teeming with non-verbal satire, especially pointed impersonations. However, dramatic regulation also created a loophole: physical and acoustic mimicry never showed up in the playscripts submitted for licensing, and plays could only later be subjected to post-performance censorship. The end result was deverbalized forms of visual and dramatic satire that were often, at least early on, almost impossible to regulate.","PeriodicalId":374965,"journal":{"name":"Libel and Lampoon","volume":"137 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117049260","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Libel and LampoonPub Date : 2022-02-03DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192846150.003.0004
A. Bricker
{"title":"Irony in the Courts","authors":"A. Bricker","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192846150.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192846150.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter studies irony in the eighteenth century and how it troubled not only lay but also legal interpretation and especially seventeenth-century revisions to the law of seditious libel. Especially difficult was ‘extrinsic’ irony, which relies not on internal linguistic clues but on readers’ knowledge of extra-textual information. Two trials foregrounded the problem of irony in prosecutions for seditious libel: Joseph Browne’s for The Country Parson’s Honest Advice, in which Chief Justice Sir John Holt established a sociocentric procedure for determining ironic intent; and Daniel Defoe’s for The Shortest Way with the Dissenters. Such a re-evaluation of irony and seditious libel reveals the extent to which Defoe was merely one victim during a troubling era of conservative judicial activism, when a new regulatory regime for policing an increasingly unruly—and verbally evasive—press was coming into being.","PeriodicalId":374965,"journal":{"name":"Libel and Lampoon","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133102954","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Libel and LampoonPub Date : 2022-02-03DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192846150.003.0002
A. Bricker
{"title":"Keeping Out of Court I","authors":"A. Bricker","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192846150.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192846150.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter documents two parallel tracks in literature and the law in the 1670s: the growth of verbal and especially ironic evasion in satire; and the courts’ development of procedures for delimiting verbal ambiguity. Particular attention is paid to the refurbishment of the doctrine of ‘common intendment’, which held that jurors should understand dubious language using a supposedly objective or ‘reasonable’ standard. This doctrine proved important because it laid the groundwork for jury directions issued throughout the next century. This chapter also tracks a significant rhetorical break between the openly defamatory manuscript satires of the seventeenth century and the verbally evasive printed satires of the early eighteenth century. Extensive verbal evasion, a rhetorical trend that starts in its most sustained form with John Dryden’s Mac Flecknoe, slowly becomes a prominent feature of later seventeenth- and especially eighteenth-century satire.","PeriodicalId":374965,"journal":{"name":"Libel and Lampoon","volume":"13 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126527064","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Libel and LampoonPub Date : 2022-02-03DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192846150.003.0008
A. Bricker
{"title":"Epilogue","authors":"A. Bricker","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192846150.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192846150.003.0008","url":null,"abstract":"Though historians have largely ceased to tell Whiggish stories about the unmitigated growth of press freedom during the eighteenth century, scholars and journalists continue to point to this period as a watershed moment for liberty of speech and the press. This epilogue not only surveys some of the ways in which press freedom has been discussed and debated, but also describes the convoluted twists and turns of eighteenth-century press regulation. In particular, it documents the expansion and sometimes sudden contraction of press freedoms across the century and the belief—stunningly common among both the authorities and writers and satirists, even those who had been successfully prosecuted for libel—that the press should be thoroughly regulated. This discussion also illustrates some critical differences between press freedom in Great Britain and the United States, both then and today; and provides an opportunity to reassess such debates during the Enlightenment and within the context of ‘bibliophilic optimism’.","PeriodicalId":374965,"journal":{"name":"Libel and Lampoon","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134152710","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Libel and LampoonPub Date : 2022-02-03DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192846150.003.0003
A. Bricker
{"title":"Keeping Out of Court II","authors":"A. Bricker","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192846150.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192846150.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter focuses on the tricks used in the book trade to print, market, distribute, and circulate satiric works. It also discusses Jonathan Swift and the Act of Anne, the first modern copyright law. Although the statute protected booksellers by requiring the formal registration of publications, it also benefited authors, by giving them a mechanism for selling their rights, sometimes even in exchange for legal protection. Swift, for instance, found numerous accomplices to absorb the repercussions of his publications in exchange for editorial freedom with his texts and the profits extending from copyright. This chapter shows how the ruses used to distribute a range of illicit works fundamentally shaped the visual and material qualities of printed satire. It also reorients discussions of copyright law away from the historical model—what intellectual property was—to how satirists and those in the book trade exploited the provisions of the Act of Anne to create legal protections.","PeriodicalId":374965,"journal":{"name":"Libel and Lampoon","volume":"74 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124406952","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}