Bowdlerization

Bowdlerization (countable and uncountable, plural Bowdlerizations)

1. Alternative letter-case form of bowdlerization.
   • 1903 November 21, “The Pestiferous Emasculation”, in Theodore F. Bonnet, editor, Town Talk, San Francisco, Calif.: Town Talk Publishing Co., page 7, column 1:

     We have had adaptations of Dickens and Scott, and even George Eliot, for children, and Bowdlerizations of the Arabian Nights and the popular fairy tales.

   • 1912, Jethro Bithell, “Note”, in Contemporary French Poetry. Selected and Translated  (The Canterbury Poets), London, : The Walter Scott Publishing Co., Ltd., page lxxxi:

     For other Bowdlerizations and deletions the publishers and their editor are responsible.

   • 1970, “Bithell, Jethro, sel. and tr. Contemporary French Poetry. ”, in George B. Parks, Ruth Z. Temple, editors, The Romance Literatures (The Literatures of the World in English Translation: A Bibliography; III), part 2 (French Literature), New York, N.Y.: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., →ISBN, section “French Literature, General”, subsection “Nineteenth Century”, subsubsection “Collections”, page 235:

     Translator notes that for Bowdlerizations and deletions the publishers are responsible.

   • 1986, “Halstead, William P., comp. Statistical History of Acting Editions of Shakespeare. ”, in James A. Moore, compiler, Richard III: An Annotated Bibliography (The Garland Shakespeare Bibliographies, 11; Garland Reference Library of the Humanities, 425), New York, N.Y., London: Garland Publishing, Inc., section “Influence; Adaptations; Parodies; Synopses”, page 766:

     Part II begins with discussions on doubling of roles, Bowdlerizations, theatre promptbooks, actor-adapters, male domination, repertory companies, copying errors in collation, and detail of methodology.

   • 1988 May, John Boardman, “Counterpoint”, in APA-Filk, number 38, Brooklyn, N.Y., page 4:

     (re hymnal revisions - or Bowdlerizations, if you like) I believe the Episcopalians are also dropping Onward Christian Soldiers because of its militarism.

   • 1995, Mary Heimann, “Familiar Prayers”, in Catholic Devotion in Victorian England (Oxford Historical Monographs), Oxford, Oxon: Clarendon Press, →ISBN, page 86:

     But just as Bowdlerizations of Shakespeare seem, from a late twentieth-century perspective, to have lost something essential to the genius of the original, so nineteenth-century alterations to The Garden of the Soul may seem to us to have damaged the integrity of Challoner’s message.

   • 1996, Roy Porter, “Is Foucault Useful for Understanding Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Sexuality?”, in Nikki R[eichard] Keddie, editor, Debating Gender, Debating Sexuality, New York, N.Y., London: New York University Press, →ISBN, section II (Sexuality: Freud, Foucault, and After), subsection A (Foucault and Sexuality), page 261:

     Disregard a score of notorious exceptions — Pepys, Boswell, Casanova — and we encounter a blanket of silence, or at least of self-censorship, magnified by the indefatigable excisions and Bowdlerizations of subsequent editors.

   • 2001, H.A. McKay, “Aichele, George (ed.), Culture, Entertainment and the Bible ”, in Society for Old Testament Study, edited by George J[ohn] Brooke, Book List 2001, Sheffield, South Yorkshire: Sheffield Academic Press, →ISBN, section 1 (General), pages 1–2:

     Phyllis Silverman Kramer’s ‘Rahab: From Peshat to Pedagogy, or: The Many Faces of a Heroine’ discusses Bowdlerizations of Rahab’s story prepared for Jewish pupils.

   • 2012, Jeremy Goldkorn, “ The Online Masses”, in Geremie R. Barmé, editor, China Story Yearbook 2012: Red Rising, Red Eclipse, Canberra, A.C.T.: Australian Centre on China in the World, ANU College of Asia & the Pacific, page 179:

     In the Internet age, the expression ‘guided public opinion’ has come to signify a range of propaganda techniques from egregious Bowdlerization of texts to employing an unofficial army of pro-government Internet commentators who are rumoured to be paid the equivalent of fifty Chinese cents per posting and who are therefore dubbed the ‘Fifty-cent Gang’ (see also Chapter 5).

   • 2013, Franco Moretti, “ ‘The bourgeois is lost . . .’”, in The Bourgeois: Between History and Literature, London, Brooklyn, N.Y.: Verso, published 2014, →ISBN, page 23:

     In both cases, a key ingredient has been the drastic infantilization of the national culture: from the pious idea of ‘family reading’ that launched the Bowdlerization of Victorian literature, to the syrupy replica—the family, smiling at its TV—that has put American entertainment to sleep.