Expurgating the Classics: Editing Out in Latin and Greek

by Stephen J. Harrison (Editor), Christopher Stray (Editor)

In the first collection to be devoted to this subject, a distinguished cast of contributors explores expurgation in both Greek and Latin authors in ancient and modern times. The major focus is on the period from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, with chapters ranging from early Greek lyric and Aristophanes through Lucretius, Horace, Martial and Catullus to the expurgation of schoolboy texts, the Loeb Classical Library and the Penguin Classics. The contributors draw on evidence from the papers of editors, and on material in publishing archives. The introduction discusses both the different types of expurgation, and how it differs from related phenomena such as censorship.

240 pages, Hardcover

First published August 15, 2012

About the author

Stephen Harrison (born 31 October 1960) is a British classicist and Professor of Latin Literature at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He specialises in the poetry of Virgil and Horace, the Roman novel and the reception of classical literature.

Also publishes as "S.J. Harrison".

Reviews

[Drianne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was *SO* good and really thought-provoking. It mainly focuses on expurgation of Classical texts from the early-modern period to the early/mid-twentieth century, although it also briefly discusses antiquity and some of the ways in which we still expurgate today.

A couple of things I hadn't really considered before: if you had asked me to define expurgation, I would have thought mainly of excision, cutting bits out of what are meant to be "complete" editions (in the original or in translation). The authors in this collection worked with a wider notion of expurgation (sanitizing, even) texts, including what we select in selected (not "complete") editions; euphemism/obfuscation (including my own beloved "under-translation") in translations/notes, not to mention the notorious translation into other non-English languages; the role of the commentary (and both "under" commenting and "over" commenting, notes full of parallels instead of actually helpful notes in school editions); the relegation of "obscene" passages to their own section (!!!), making it much easier, as Byron famously noted, for the schoolboy (see below) to find them; and of course excision strategies and how they are (not) marked.

The books also dealt extensively with the reasons for expurgation: both concerns for the audience's moral well-being (and there were so many fascinating historically-grounded accounts of this, one of the most interesting being the publication of Herodas' Mimes in the 1890s amidst the "Woman Question" of the 19th c., first-wave feminism, the opening of the women's colleges at Oxbridge, etc.: the entire effect of the schoolboy becoming a possibly also female student, and then adult woman reader) but, in a way I had never considered before, expurgation out of concern for the *author's* reputation, not just as a moral being, but extending that to their literary reputation as well: that by removing obscenity (scatology, same-sex eroticism), you've removed the culturally-dictated dross that's keeping your author from being their pure, best writing. So if you stop the reader from coming across, say, Horace's odes to Ligurinus, 4.1 or 4.10, you've presented to the reader a Horace who didn't have to write 'uninspired' or 'formulaic' poetry to a boy in the Greek manner, but can read only all his 'good' (heterosexual) poetry that's (supposedly) *literarily* better. How convenient that the bad bits were also... bad, but here's the thing: when dealing with students especially, selections *do* have to be made (now more than ever, time-wise), and although I think our criteria as a field/society for what's unacceptable have changed immensely since the mid-20th c. (it's easy to praise ourselves for now NOT editing out things like same-sex eroticism or even some of the primary obscenities in school editions), I know I still fall prey to exactly the same impulses with different targets: for instance, I'm considering reading Plautus' Amphitruo with students (and note: this is a Plautus play that's generally considered quite acceptable for school use because of the lack of obscene jokes, so I'm already starting there). It's too long for the time available, so selections will have to be made. And for my own part, what am I most inclined to cut? (Some of) the interminable jokes about slave-beating are first on my excision list: they're repetitive, I say, and not-funny, the kids won't miss anything on a literary level, not to mention the problematic nature of Roman attitudes towards slavery, no modern reader would enjoy it anyway... Well, neither did the editors (pre-Dover) generally find Aristophanes' obscenities funny or worth reading. *snip* Plus ça change...

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a collection of contributions from various scholars on the bowdlerization of Greek and Latin literature, mainly from the seventeenth century to the twentieth. Although classical prose and poetry was long considered the foundation of education, the sexual or scatological material that authors like Aristophanes or Catullus abounded in was considered inappropriate for young minds.

Or not only young minds: some early volumes in the Loeb Classical Library series, which sought to make classical literature available to a wide adult audience, translated risqué passages in Greek literature into Latin. The assumption was that any reader possessing knowledge of Latin would be a more mature and morally upstanding individual, able to handle such stuff, unlike the average man in the street! Another amusing tidbit comes in the chapter on how expurgation was done in the Penguin Classics series: a translator complains that he is unable to get a passage from Daphnis and Chloe into print, even though this same literary work had been translated into English in full in the seventeenth-century under the Puritans and called a “pleasant romance for young ladies”.

The great limitation of this collection is that it treats expurgation only in the English-speaking world in the aforementioned centuries, some references to Antiquity and German practice aside. That is, there is almost nothing here about expurgation on the continent.