catsittingstill

bowdlerizing?

From:

bigbumble.livejournal.com

bowd•ler•ize
verb \ˈbōd-lə-ˌrīz, ˈbau̇d-\
bowd•ler•ized bowd•ler•iz•ing
Definition
1 to expurgate (as a book) by modifying or omitting parts considered vulgar
2 to modify by simplifying, abridging, or distorting in style or content
— bowd•ler•i•za•tion \ˌbōd-lə-rə-ˈzā-shən, ˌbau̇d-\ noun
Examples
bowdlerize a classic novel by removing offensive language
-a bowdlerized version of “Robinson Crusoe” that purportedly makes it unobjectionable for children-
Origin of BOWDLERIZE
Thomas Bowdler †1825 English editor

Edited Date: 2011-01-06 03:53 am (UTC)

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So they are rewritten to make them more acceptable to modern times. Ignoring history and all that kind of stuff.

On the first pass I don't like the idea. It smacks of censorship, if we don't know where we've been or where we're coming from how do we know how we've changed. That may be badly put, it's 2 in the stupid morning. and I ought to be asleep. I don't like it. I can't describe well why.

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Well, rewritten to make them more acceptable to the times when they were rewritten.

I have mixed feelings about this. There are sea chanteys that were rewritten to remove the vulgar parts the Victorians couldn't tolerate--but on the other hand, if they hadn't been rewritten there is some doubt in my mind that they would have survived at all in a world where nobody was willing to learn and sing them.

It's sort of a "maiming" versus "extinction" balance, the way I think of it.

I don't think it's necessary to maim Huckleberry Finn for it to survive, though.

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randwolf.livejournal.com

Maya Reynolds comments, "I called an African-American friend to ask her opinion. She said she has never read the book and would not because of the 'n' word." So, hmmm, it may be more a matter of translation than censorship.

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Then your friend is depriving herself, because of accurate language, of a book that is deeply sympathetic to her people and highly critical of the ante-bellum South, with an African American character who is nearly as important as the narrator.

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I think Randwolf has a point, actually.

I agree that Huck Finn is a book deeply sympathetic to African Americans and highly critical of the society that oppressed them, and all that, but...

Demanding that oppressed people "grow a thicker skin" about their oppression smacks of privilege to me. The n-word doesn't hurt me--I find it objectionable, but it was never used against me--but I can certainly see how an African-American person might find it not just objectionable, but actively hurtful.

Sort of like when I asked a male acquaintance to quit using "bitch" to mean "someone I have defeated" because I found it offensive to compare a defeated opponent to a woman, and he used the word twenty times in the next two sentences while he was explaining (the usual term for this is "mansplaining") that it was really alright and not offensive at all.

If a notable work of literature referred to women and defeated opponents as bitches all the time, I might well avoid it too--whether it was deeply sympathetic to women and critical of the patriarchy, with a woman character nearly as important as the narrator, or not.

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You see, it wouldn't bother me, if that was correct language for the time and place. (And I can imagine particular circumstances where it would be.)

I guess it comes down to caring more about language than about feminism. (I detest terms like 'chair' and 'chairperson' and won't use them.) Which is, as you point out, a peculiarity of mine. I still think it's a pity, but I see your point.

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That's possible.

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There's a better term for it than my subject line but I only have a minute.

Ancient Egyptians who thought the sun rose in the East, passed overhead, set in the West, and returned under the ground to the East in the night were not stupid, ignorant, or uneducated.

Medieval physicians who followed the theory of the four humors were not stupid, ignorant, or uneducated.

English-speakers who used the word "nigger" in the nineteenth century were not necessarily stupid, ignorant, or bigoted. Remember that Huck is an uneducated country boy, and bear in mind that from personal experience I can attest that in some parts of Appalachia as late as the 1960s there were unbigoted white people for whom this was the only word for a Black person, and who used it without derogation. And so it was for Huck. Would you (not talking to you, Cat) prefer an edition that spoke of "African-American Jim", or of "person of color Jim"?

From the Oxford English Dictionary; note especially the part I have bolded and underlined:

Probably an alteration of neger n., after classical Latin niger [meaning the color black - Dr. Whom, aka thnidu] (see niger n.1); compare earlier Nigro n., Nigrite n.1 Compare post-classical Latin niger black person (1582 in a Spanish colonial source). Compare also Swedish †niger (1758), probably a borrowing from English (although this may perhaps represent a borrowing of neger n.).

...

The word was initially used as a neutral term, and only began to acquire a derogatory connotation from the mid 18th cent. onwards (compare sense A. 1b). In standard English usage the word Negro n. had already become the usual neutral term by the end of the 17th cent.

Respectfully submitted,
Dr. Whom, Consulting Linguist, Grammarian, Orthoëpist, and Philological Busybody

Edited Date: 2011-01-06 04:50 am (UTC)

From:

gfish.livejournal.com

That's great and all, but it isn't being read by people from the early 19th century. The word emphatically means something different now, something that actively hinders comprehension and enjoyment of a very important text. When languages change, old books get translated.

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No they bloody well don't, unless the language is unintelligible. I read Chaucer in the original early modern English, which is how I learned to read it at school. I prefer to listen, at least, to Beowulf in the original language, despite the fact it isn't really English.

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I read Chaucer in translation in High School; we didn't attempt the original until I was in college and even then we stuck to short excerpts, with footnotes and explanations for the really unusual words. And I can't understand Beowulf in the original at all.

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When I went to school we were expected to read (and analyse) Chaucer in the original early modern English at 16. I cannot say whether this is still the case in UK schools. I prefer to read Malory in the original spelling etc too.

I need a crib to understand the text of Beowulf, but if it is read aloud in the correct accent, the meaning comes through.

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Really?

I can't get a thing out of "ne sorwe snottor guma" myself, except that Kip has happened to mention several times it means "no sorrow, wise man" or roughly "don't be sad we're all going to die, courageous (because not being courageous is foolish) man."

You must be way better at hearing the root words in it than I am.

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I'm working class Yorkshire, from an area with a strong dialect, and I'm familiar with Middle English. Both those help when listening to Old English and Anglo-Saxon, and, with Beowulf, familiarity with the story helps. However, I still get no more than the gist.

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I Am Not A Linguist But

_The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_ was published in 1884, yes?

And the mid 18th century would be 1750?

So the word did have derogatory connotations at the time the book was published?

I haven't read the book recently and don't remember if there was textual evidence as to when the book was set, but steamboats came into use on the Mississippi about 1820 or so, and I seem to recall steamboats in the story, which would suggest it was set no earlier than that.

I just--am having real difficulty adjusting my view of the n-word to suggest that white people who used it saw black people as equals. Huck certainly doesn't start out seeing Jim as the equal of a white adult, and I'm not sure he ever quite gets there, even as he learns to see Jim as a person worthy of an apology and a person worthy of sparing from slavery. And the society Huck is living and travelling in *certainly* doesn't see Jim as the equal of a white adult.

So it's hard for me to understand how the people in the book could be using the n-word as anything but a pejorative--and the fact that they have no other word for black person doesn't seem to me to change that.

From:

randwolf.livejournal.com

The problem was that, yes, "nigger" was the word for "black person" in the time and place of the book, but it was in no sense neutral. Twain makes it very clear in the book: the characters only understood blacks as slaves and inferiors, used the word as synonymous with "slave," and Huck's coming to another understanding was a great and wrenching insight. Having dipped into the book and looked for references to "nigger," I can add that, yes, the word has become jarring, even to me, who never heard the word until I was a teenager.

Publisher's Weekly article on this edition, with interview with Auburn Professor Alan Gribben, the Twain scholar who proposed this. Quote:

"After a number of talks, I was sought out by local teachers, and to a person they said we would love to teach this novel, and Huckleberry Finn, but we feel we can't do it anymore. In the new classroom, it's really not acceptable." Gribben became determined to offer an alternative for grade school classrooms and "general readers" that would allow them to appreciate and enjoy all the book has to offer. "For a single word to form a barrier, it seems such an unnecessary state of affairs," he said.

Thinking it over, I do worry that this is a bad precedent, but that seems the worst thing I can say about it.

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So the word did have derogatory connotations at the time the book was published?

Q to linguist: What does this word/construction/form/intonation mean/connote/imply?
Linguist's A: Used by whom? when? where? in what context?

As I said:

Remember that Huck is an uneducated country boy, and bear in mind that from personal experience I can attest that in some parts of Appalachia as late as the 1960s there were unbigoted white people for whom this was the only word for a Black person, and who used it without derogation. And so it was for Huck.

I just--am having real difficulty adjusting my view of the n-word to suggest that white people who used it saw black people as equals.

They didn't, for the most part. That's a significant difference from our* situation: We have other attitudes, and with them, other words. We view the word "nigger" as incontrovertibly an insult, and there are alternatives with the same meaning -- not that any of them would fit in _Huck Finn_, imho -- so we can avoid it.

*(today, you and me and the other participants in this thread)

For us, today, it is near-impossible to separate
- the attitude expressed by the word as used by the characters
from
- their attitude toward the referent of the word, i.e., Black people.
Huck and Tom didn't use the word "nigger" as a deliberate insult: it was the only word they had, and they saw no need of any other. The "insult" was in their society's view of Black people.

This is not an easy thing to explain to schoolchildren. Twain wasn't writing for schoolchildren. See the article (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2011/jan/05/censoring-mark-twain-n-word-unacceptable)

lil_shepherd cites below, and also the discussions (http://catalana.livejournal.com/358011.html) in

catalana's blog.

Here's a similar situation: In the original edition of _Oliver Twist_ Fagin is continually referred to as "the Jew" even when his religion/ethnicity is not relevant to the context -- i.e., most of the time. Dickens removed many of those references in revising the text, but the earlier version is the one continually reprinted. Is "Jew" derogatory? No. Is it used derogatorily? Yes, often, and that is why Dickens made his (unheeded) revisions. Many Jews avoid the noun completely and refer instead to "Jewish people" ... as I started to do even while typing this sentence! I am Jewish, and try deliberately to use "Jew" where appropriate, but habit and surrounding usage exert a lot of pressure. I hope it doesn't go down the slide.

Edited Date: 2011-01-06 08:55 pm (UTC)

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Hmm.

So Twain may have thought the word derogatory but used the voice of Huck who didn't think it derogatory because he didn't know any different and thus didn't mean anything derogatory by it.

Which is kind of stark, actually, putting a derogatory term in the mouth of an innocent like that. I suppose Twain meant it to be. I suppose it still is when it happens today, though I think today it would be less innocent.

You know, I hadn't noticed that about _Oliver Twist_. I should have.

Hmm.

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It has been noted and is discussed a lot over here - I guess because Dickens was British.

From:

admnaismith.livejournal.com

My understanding is that it's being done to make white Southerners feel more comfortable. You know--the same people who are also trying to make everyone believe that there was never any racism, that slaves were happy, and that the Civil War was about liberty and States' rights.

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My understanding is it's being done so that teachers can assign the book to their students. Huckleberry Finn, one of the best books in American literature, is banned from many schools because of that one word.

I deplore the need for changing the word -- people don't understand the context, and mostly don't want to -- but, with a heavy sigh, I conclude that it's better to have children read the book than not, so on balance the "updated" version is useful.

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It could have more than one purpose.

Or even if the people who produced the altered edition had one purpose in mind, people could support it for other reasons.

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capnblackberry.livejournal.com

I'm with you on this one - not my issue - but - I don't think it would be a good idea to start re-writing Huck Finn, the Bard's plays, or the Bible for that matter, to get rid of politically incorrect language - my impression is that any changes to original text makes it very difficult for students or readers to put the work in context - isn't the footnote the proper tool for including elucidating information.

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"Politically correct" or "politically incorrect" makes me break out in metaphorical hives, because it seems like the term is a bigot's way of reframing bigotry to sound like maverick independence. It implies that opposition to prejudice is a passing whim.

I disapproved of the change at first but am starting to think I may have been wrong about that.

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"Politically correct" or "politically incorrect" makes me break out in metaphorical hives, because it seems like the term is a bigot's way of reframing bigotry to sound like maverick independence.

Then say, rather, "language that is now widely agreed to be insulting and inappropriate, but which was not so viewed in its time and context", where context includes the characters who speak it.

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If the book is being read in english class, surely that aspect should covered. Language, English especially is fluid, it changes. I can't think right now. But it really seems dumb to me. But then I've never been black, so what would I know.

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The problem is, I gather from articles I've read about this, that the book is not being read in English class. A teacher assigns it, parents and/or busybodies say "OMG THE N WORD!" and the teacher is forced to un-assign it.

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I think some of the "busybodies" may simply be people who have experienced the word as part of their oppression. And such people may be particularly resistant to seeing their children go to a school where that word will have to be allowed in the classroom, because omitting it while discussing a version of Huck Finn that has it would be nearly impossible. From the classroom it migrates to the playground--and white kids caught using it to make their black classmates feel bad say "I was talking about this week's English assignment." when caught.

The more I think about this from a perspective that is not mine, the more reasonable it begins to sound.

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Even with discussion this can happen. In Grade 10 we were given Catcher in the Rye to read. my Dad said "you're not reading that trash" and we were with in days given a different book to read. A Canadian book, which in a Canadian school seemed like a much better idea, called Cabbagetown, by Hugh Garner. Now I've still not read Catcher in the Rye, and never asked my Father what was objectionable about it. But I know that if he had read Cabbage town he would have found it and The Apprentiship of Duddy Kraviz by Richler objectionable because there was language and sex in both. Oh and Murder in Don Mills. I liked that we had switched to Canadian content and my Dad didn't seem to know the books!

It's one of the things I find so offensive about people who want to ban books. So rarely have they actually read the whole book. And rarer still do they actually understand the book. You can't protect someone by stopping them from reading something. They can just go read something else, and in the case of Huck Finn, they might just loose a valuable lesson along the way.

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"It's one of the things I find so offensive about people who want to ban books. So rarely have they actually read the whole book."

Or any of the book, or have the least clue what the book is about. And it's not enough for them to be ignorant themselves; they want to force everybody else to be ignorant.

My father's attitude about books -- though I don't think we seriously put it to the test -- was, "If they don't understand it, it won't hurt them. And if they do, it's too late to protect them from it." Looking back on my voracious reading habits, I completely agree with him.

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Or any of the book, or have the least clue what the book is about

I don't think that's actually the problem in this case.

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So rarely have they actually read the whole book.

I don't think that's actually the problem in this case.

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I think it all depends on the age of student it is aimed at. I remember, back in the 60s, at age 16, writing the original four letter words back into the edition of Chaucer we were working on at the time.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is, like Chaucer, a great English classic and a book written for adults. What's more, the book is as much about Jim as it is about Huck. It is, actually, a subtle anti-slavery and pro equal-rights text. But it portrays a society and portrays it accurately, including the speech patterns. If you are semi-abridging it for giggling 12 year olds, then I can see some need for some bowlderisation. However, by high school, people ought to be able to understand that a novel is of its time and deal with words that have changed their meaning.

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I'm thinking it's not the students who are the problem, but so-called adults who can't deal with the word and don't want to understand its significance in context, and who therefore insist that the book be banned from classrooms and libraries.

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You are probably right.

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Oh, and just by chance I came across this view, from the liberal leaning UK newspaper, The Guardian on this very subject.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2011/jan/05/censoring-mark-twain-n-word-unacceptable

The author, a Twain expert, makes one or two points not covered here.

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