Entertainment / Literature / Bowdlerization: A later editor's censorship of sexuality, profanity, and political sentiment of an earlier author's text. Editors and scholars usually use this term in a derogatory way to denote an inferior or incomplete text. A text censored in this way is said to be bowdlerized. The term comes from the name of Reverend Thomas Bowdler (1754-1825) who produced The Family Shakespeare (1815-18). He removed whatever he considered 'unfit to be read by a gentleman in the company of ladies.'
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Entertainment / Literature / Ur-Text: A hypothetical 'best' version of a lost literary text based on correlating later manuscripts and examining the differences between them. An Ur-text is not an actual physical manuscript we can examine MORE
Entertainment / Literature / Censorship: The act of hiding, removing, altering or destroying copies of art or writing so that general public access to it is partially or completely limited. Contrast with bowdlerization. MORE
Entertainment / Literature / Bowdlerize: To censor or alter an earlier writer's work. See discussion under bowdlerization, above. MORE