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标题: The First Pornography in UK and US [打印本页]

作者: choi    时间: 7-7-2013 15:49
标题: The First Pornography in UK and US
本帖最后由 choi 于 7-8-2013 14:58 编辑

Ruth Graham, 'Nothing But a Harlot;' How a listy heroine helped end American censorship, 200 years later. Boston Globe, July 7, 2013
http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas ... vhB87MeI/story.html

Note:
(a) harlot (n): "PROSTITUTE"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/harlot

(b)
(i) Fanny Hill
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_Hill
(Frances "Fanny" Hill; published in 1748; "the first pornography [in the world] to use the form of the novel;" section 1 Publishing history)
(A) Giacomo Casanova (1725-1798) wrote his autobiography (Story of My Life)--not a novel--in 1789, which was first published in 1822.
(B) Marquis de Sade bibliography
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquis_de_Sade_bibliography

Marquis de Sade (1740-1814) first wrote in 1782.
(ii) fanny (n; First Known Use  circa 1840)
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fanny

Its definitions are different in UK (as well as Australia) and US.
(iii) Patrick Spedding and James Lambert, Fanny Hill, Lord Fanny, and the Myth of Metonymy. Studies in Philosophy, 108: 108-132.
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/stu ... 108.1.spedding.html

(c) "In America, the book was the subject of the country's first obscenity trial, in 1821, when two Massachusetts men were charged with printing an illustrated version."
(i) Justice Paul E Pfeifer, The trials of Fanny Hill. Supreme Court of Ohio & Ohio Judicial System, June 6, 2001
http://www.sconet.state.oh.us/SC ... n/2001/jp060601.asp

three consecutive paragraphs:

"In 1821, in the first known obscenity case in the United States, a Massachusetts court outlawed Fanny Hill. The publisher, Peter Holmes, was convicted for printing a 'lewd and obscene' novel.

"Holmes appealed to the Massachusetts Supreme Court. He claimed that the judge, relying only on the prosecution's description, had not even seen the book. The state Supreme Court wasn't swayed. The Chief Justice wrote that Holmes was 'a scandalous and evil disposed person' who had contrived to 'debauch and corrupt' the citizens of Massachusetts and 'to raise and create in their minds inordinate and lustful desires.'

"Basically, Holmes lost his appeal because the judge had refused to review the book, had refused to let the jury see it, and had refused to enter passages from the book into the record because to do so would 'require that the public itself should give permanency and notoriety to indecency, in order to punish it.'

(ii) Commonwealth v Holmes (1821) 17 Tyng (17 Mass) 336 (upholding common law obscenity indictment)
(A) Tyng is the surname o the court reporter.
(B) This was the state Supreme Judicial Court decision, which is not available online (unless one pays). I read the paper version, which basically ruled against the Massachusetts publisher--based on common law. You see, Bill of Rights (the first to tenth amendments to the United States Constitution did not apply to the states until the passage of the fourteenth amendment, in 1868.
(d) "The state's case against the book went all the way to the [United States] Supreme Court"

A Book Named "John Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure" v Attorney General of Massachusetts (1966) 383 US 413.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct ... R_0383_0413_ZS.html

There are tabs in the top horizontal bar.

(e) "The book's publication [in 1748] caused Cleland to serve a brief jail sentence for obscenity, and after his release, he quickly issued a shorter, bowdlerised version."
(i) bowdlerize (vt)
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bowdlerize
(ii) Thomas Bowdler
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bowdler
(1754 – 1825)

(f) William I Cowin (1938- ) was an Associate Justice of the Massachusetts Appeals Court 2001-2008. His wife Judith (1942- ) served in Supreme Judicial Court (which is state supreme court) 1999-2011.

作者: choi    时间: 7-8-2013 14:59
I corrected a few typos in the original posting. However, I also add the following to Note (c):

"(ii) Commonwealth v Holmes (1821) 17 Tyng (17 Mass) 336 (upholding common law obscenity indictment)
(A) Tyng is the surname of the court reporter.
(B) This was the state Supreme Judicial Court decision, which is not available online (unless one pays). I read the paper version, which basically ruled against the Massachusetts publisher--based on common law. You see, Bill of Rights (the first to tenth amendments to the United States Constitution did not apply to the states until the passage of the fourteenth amendment, in 1868.




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