‎Banned Books, Burned Books: Forbidden Literary Works - Apple TV

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From Shakespeare to Harry Potter and beyond, tracing the history of book banning and censorship in the English-speaking world and exploring the reasons behind its persistent existence.

Special Interest · 2023 · 32 min

Starring Maureen Corrigan

EPISODE 1

Bowdlerizing the Bard

Beginning the course with an introduction to the concept of literary censorship and examining why even authors as influential and esteemed as Shakespeare can fall prey to it.

32 min · 27 Jan 2023
EPISODE 2

Ulysses on Trial

James Joyce's Ulysses is considered the novel that ushered modernism into mainstream literature, yet its introduction to the world was ruthlessly contested.

35 min · 27 Jan 2023
EPISODE 3

The Defense for Lady Chatterley's Lover

British author D. H. Lawrence was widely viewed as one of the greatest writers of the English language, yet this popularity did not prevent some readers from taking offense to his frank depictions of sexuality, resulting in an obscenity trial.

34 min · 27 Jan 2023
EPISODE 4

Censors From the Inquisition to the Puritans

Stepping back in time to get the broader historical context for censorship and seeing how the cases of the 20th and 21st centuries fit into a much larger pattern of religious and moral pressure from the 12th century onward.

33 min · 27 Jan 2023
EPISODE 5

Anthony Comstock's Moral Crusade

Meet Anthony Comstock, the relentless late-19th-century enforcer of Victorian codes of sexual propriety.

32 min · 27 Jan 2023
EPISODE 6

Books on Fire: The Reformation to Rushdie

Here, look at the most extreme form of print censorship: the physical destruction of books deemed heretical, dangerous, or subversive.

30 min · 27 Jan 2023

Maureen Corrigan

Host