Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.
Log in
- Convenor:
-
Hervé Baudry
(FCSH)
Send message to Convenor
- Location:
- Sala 1.06, Edifício I&D, Piso 1
- Start time:
- 16 July, 2015 at
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
This panel is about a technology in the early modern ideological and textual control. It debates upon the censorship corrective procedures. The panel aims to interrogate more specifically the exchanges within and outside Europe, between inquisitorial and non inquisitorial cultures.
Long Abstract:
This panel is about a technology in the early modern ideological and textual control. It debates upon the censorship corrective procedures. In the framework of reception studies and communication theories, censorship as a whole is both a medium and a source of noise and perturbation of the message. It is considered as an obstacle and a positive element to its development. The phenomena about negotiation between intellectual and material producers of knowledge (works of Raz-Krakotzkin, Jostock) lead to reflect on the interactions between the actors of politics of control. These often vary due to local, chronological, political and religious circumstances. But censorship studies tend to localize the fields of investigation.
The convenor of the panel, an investigator in the field of Iberian expurgative censorship, is convinced that these gaps also depend on the lacks of debating on exchanges in the field. Therefore, the panel aims to interrogate more specifically the exchanges within and outside Europe, between inquisitorial and non inquisitorial cultures. It will debate on to what extent inquisitorial know-how, mainly the use of Indexes of expurgation and other means develop what Anthony Grafton called the cultures of correction. Can the spreading and reproducing of these instruments, regularly updated and printed from 1571 until the end of the 18th Cent. be considered as a technological transfer in cultural exchanges as many of them were reproduced and used in non inquisitorial countries, as England, France and Germany? And what was their impact in these exchanges and the history of modernity?
Accepted papers:
Session 1Patrick Schwemmer (Musashi University)
Paper short abstract:
As I show from new materials, the Jesuit Visitor Valignano used European theatre and music to present the triumphant Japanese Boys’ Embassy in Japan, both before Christian lords in their home region and the sovereign Hideyoshi—despite an official ban on theatre in a mission context.
Paper long abstract:
In 1582, the Jesuit Visitor Alessandro Valignano began an ambitious public relations campaign: he recruited four boys from among the families of local Japanese strongmen who had converted to Christianity, paraded them before the Pope and various European monarchs, and then published voluminous dialogues in their names in Europe, extolling the value of Christianity for Japan and soliciting donations to the mission effort. This paper focuses on the reception they received on their return to Japan in 1590, which has attracted little scholarly interest despite, or indeed because of, its ambivalences for Jesuit ideals and restrictions, which in this case were honored in the breach by one of the mission's highest ranking members. I introduce previously unstudied original Jesuit letters describing the boys' performances of European theatre and music before Christian lords in their home region and before the more skeptical eye of the sovereign Hideyoshi and his court, who while Valignano and the boys were away had issued the first edict of expulsion. I explore the contradiction and harmony between this diplomatic use of theatre and official Jesuit prohibitions on its use in a mission context, prohibitions which Valignano himself had naturally enforced in previous years. Self-censorship and compensatory measures are resorted to in order to ensure the purity of the presentation, but Valignano largely sacrifices the letter of the law, no doubt because of the urgency of convincing Hideyoshi himself to show no great zeal in enforcing his own edict: that of the expulsion of the missionaries.
Paula Hoyos Hattori (University of Buenos Aires)
Paper short abstract:
During the 16th century, many Jesuits witnessed, wrote, edited and corrected the news that arrived to Europe about Japanese culture. Tensions between the experience and the narrative were shown in the edition process of that corpus. In this paper, we analyze this in three epistles published in 1598.
Paper long abstract:
Firstly conceived only for Jesuit readers, the Jesuits' letters written in the 16th century from societies unknown in Europe rapidly became invaluable material for publishers (Zupanov 1999). However, the original letters were edited before their publication. Everything that was "not edifying" (Palomo 2006) or, as we propose, that was inconvenient for the image of the missionary work, resulted to be erased.
In this paper, we analyze a corpus of three letters written from Japan in 1562 and published in 1598 in Évora (Cartas que os padres e irmãos da Companhia de Iesus que andão nos Reynos de Iapão ascreuerão aos da mesma Companhia da India e Europa des do anno de 1549 até o de 1580). The documents' authors were Baltasar Gago, Aires Sanches and Luis de Almeida. In each case, we compare (i) the published version with (ii) the original one, edited by Ruiz-de-Medina from the remaining manuscripts (1995).
The comparison reveals that several fragments were removed or subtly edited. For example, Almeida narrates a voyage to a little Christian community in Kagoshima, which had been converted by Francis Xavier; only in (ii) the original version, Almeida says that they still worshiped Dainichi, a Buddhist word used by Xavier himself as a translation of "God" at the beginning of the mission.
We believe that these differences between published and not-published versions show the Society's aim to build an official history about the Japanese mission. What was put aside from the European readers' eye? And why?
Sofia Geraldes
Paper short abstract:
Napoleonic wars have been a prolific period for propaganda conveyance and exchanges between Iberians countries and England. Throughout the different stages experienced by Portugal, our aim is to demonstrate the censorship's role during this period, observing the reactions towards the printing enthusiasm.
Paper long abstract:
Based on concrete examples related with napoleonic invasions, the purpose is to see how censorship proceeded between emboldening, compromising and expurgation. Study cases from Castro and Alves have already initiated a reflection about censorship during peninsular war. We offer here to summarize singular cases of expurgation in order to define the role of individuality, elements who trigger correction, what's possible to accept even with reluctance.
Censorship is able to make concessions in order to achieve a greater purpose: Portugal's independence. That ability to compromise with certain rules depends on the personality of the censor who is willing to explore the gaps remaining between authorities. Just after the first invasion, between negotiation and compromising, the censor advocates for the sake of rising patriotic feelings and actions. However some delicate matters don't appear: the silence in printing echoes in other media (manuscripts, discussions, foreign publication).
At the same time, documents coming specially from Spain and England are adapted, even with no censorship intervention, but with own translator initiative in order to please the government's wishes. With a greater liberty to express themselves, British and Spanish publicists and authors implicate directly some actors and personalities which seems very difficult to achieve in Portugal. It's a different way of dealing with ideas. Implicating by naming, expressing the lack of confidence towards the government being impossible, different strategies to avoid violating censor's rules are implemented: publishing in England, circulation of manuscripts, silencing some news (it's become more about what is not said rather than what is expressed).
Hervé Baudry (FCSH)
Paper short abstract:
This paper focusses on the transfer of the main technological instrument used for controlling books from Inquisitorial countries into non Inquisitorial ones, more specifically the case of Indexes of prohibited books in Early Modern French Censorship system.
Paper long abstract:
Questioning Early Modern Censorship on the ground of local conditions allows to divide the European countries into two parts, Inquisitorial and non-Inquisitorial ones. It is assumed that the national systems, political, religious and legal, determine these conditions, hence the variety of practices. But a question remained unsolved, if not unasked : to what extent did the border between both parts exist and what kind of exchanges can we observe as to the use of the Inquisitorial Indexes of books ? The function of these technological instruments for controlling books, produced during centuries, has not been sufficiently analysed outside the areas were they were in law. Many of them, not only Roman, circulated and were used in non-Inquisitorial countries. In my paper, I propose to examine the case of early modern France culture (16th-17th Cent.) where many editions of the Indexes of prohibition and expurgation, Roman, Spanish and Portuguese, appear to have been surprisingly numerous.