ShmoopTube

Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.

Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos


History Trivia Videos 32 videos

History Trivia: Virginia Hall
51 Views

Who was Virginia Hall, and how did she give Wonder Woman a run for her money? Hit play to find out. 

See All

History Trivia: Ulysses Book Court Ruling 9 Views


Share It!


Description:

Careful, kids-- we're about to get into some grade A literary scandalousness.

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:00

Thank you We sneak in Freedom of speech is a

00:05

fundamental part of being an american it's the first amendment

00:10

We love freedom of speech And yet even to this

00:13

day some books are banned One in particular i'd like

00:17

to talk about is ulysses by james joyce So james

00:21

joyce started writing the book in nineteen Fourteen and at

00:23

the time censorship laws were ridiculous And of course this

00:27

was before television but in printed word swear words any

00:32

kind of sexuality it was like nothing was okay Nothing

00:36

was okay This is like the town from footloose packed

00:40

into a chastity belt And then like constantly being threatened

00:44

like i'm gonna wash your mouth out with soap that

00:47

was publishers in nineteen fourteen The book was massive It

00:50

ended up being eight hundred pages So even by today's

00:53

standards is a live a huge book So it was

00:57

hugely expensive to publish an entire book especially one that's

01:01

hundred pages So instead of publishing the entire book joyce

01:05

started publishing little snippets of it And readers were like

01:11

hail readers were like what is this smut And they

01:16

actually filed a lawsuit And who in particular it is

01:19

but certain readers filed a lawsuit against the publishers for

01:23

printing ulysses They rocks you like mussels Horrible The publishers

01:28

were cool with it Readers were the ones who were

01:31

outraged that it was lewd and they demanded that Just

01:36

get rid of it Stop publishing this They filed a

01:38

lawsuit It was just super dramatic In nineteen twenty joyce

01:44

moved to france He was like americans Dollar proves and

01:48

sylvia beach who is the owner of the shakes Shakespeare

01:52

and company bookstore decided to help print and distribute the

01:56

full eight hundred pages of the book which was awesome

01:59

around france So in nineteen twenty two is when additions

02:03

started to be to come out and be published and

02:05

circulated but it was still illegal in britain and in

02:08

the u s a little hard to smuggle an eight

02:11

hundred page book It's pretty thick fur Yeah anything Yeah

02:17

but of course anything that is kind of scandalous is

02:20

going to be popular Obviously so bootleggers started printing the

02:25

book and circulating it illegally which is awful because then

02:29

joyce made no money from it And i mean at

02:32

the time it's it's Not like he was making money

02:34

From like going on worldwide book signing tours with his

02:38

lewd material or you know being a speaking universities or

02:42

anything So that sucks If you're all familiar with joyce

02:46

everyone knows that his stuff is very long It is

02:50

very complex reading So you probably like what's the big

02:53

deal Like why was it banned Well by today's standards

02:56

it's not a big deal you know you turn on

02:58

the tv Daytime tv has way worse stuff But the

03:01

reason his book was so famous was because he focused

03:03

on the gritty dirty details of just normal natural day

03:09

to day life So eating drinking bowel movements you know

03:12

much more personal activities if you know what i mean

03:15

The list goes on He just covers all of it

03:18

And it's kind of gross i'm sure But humans air

03:22

brose I'm growth You're grows well goes what we do

03:28

The natural mind However that was a radical approach to

03:32

storytelling at the time Honesty What are we thinking Oh

03:36

flute And this is what the book's american publisher purposefully

03:42

very intentionally got a book out there on had it

03:46

confiscated And that way they got to go to trial

03:50

So they were like lips get our day in court

03:52

I want my se on this in nineteen thirty four

03:56

they went to trial and judge john woolsey named it

04:00

permissible He's like this book is fine He said that

04:04

it was fine because the like obscene bits were not

04:08

lust inducing so certain aspects of sexuality He i'm assuming

04:14

he probably would have been cool with but he just

04:16

said that the obscene bits in the book worm or

04:20

vomit inducing than anything Yet it's funny because he still

04:23

praised james joyce is writing style is writing in his

04:27

writing style and he said it's it's a very honest

04:30

and accurate depiction of just human thoughts and feelings and

04:35

activities So yeah g o him he was a rules

04:41

e was a progressive For the time he was a

04:43

lamb Well lam james joyce had a little lamb I'm 00:04:50.07 --> [endTime] done

Related Videos

GED Social Studies 1.1 Civics and Government
39794 Views

GED Social Studies 1.1 Civics and Government

Fake News
11938 Views

How do you tell fake news from real news?

Jane Eyre Summary
123033 Views

When you're about to marry the love of your life, not many things could stop you. However, finding out that your future hubby is keeping his crazy...

What is Shmoop?
91405 Views

Here at Shmoop, we work for kids, not just the bottom line. Founded by David Siminoff and his wife Ellen Siminoff, Shmoop was originally conceived...

ACT Math 4.5 Elementary Algebra
492 Views

ACT Math: Elementary Algebra Drill 4, Problem 5. What is the solution to the problem shown?