Art Nouveau Magazine.

The censoring of the arts is not a current event that started with the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), but dates back to the 17^th century when the Licensing Order of 1643 was in place in the Parliamentary England. The Licensing Order began after the abolishment of the Star Chamber, which was an English court of law, and began to take matters of publication in their own hands. Their intentions were good, but some of their methods seemed like a way to control the free minds of the people by using the Licensing Order to keep an eye on radicals within the country. Most importantly and dangerous of all, the Licensing Order warred against freedom of speech. 

The Licensing Order had several goals that prevented writers from publishing their works. Their goals were to 1) destroy books that were against the government, 2) to arrest and imprison offensive writers, printers and publishers, 3) pre-publication licensing and 4) registration of all printing materials with the names of author, printer and publisher in the Register at Stationers’ Hall. These rules, being pressed upon all authors alike, did not sit well with them as it did not allow for them to either write or even read any literature that was outside the realm of the government or spoke against the government almost forcing a person to keep their opinions to themselves and not have the ability to express themselves in the fashion that they would like to.

One defense against the efforts of the Licensing Order was brought about by the poet John Milton who had previous problems with censorship when he tried to publish his famous divorce tracts called Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce which he provided his reasoning for why married people should be able to have the free will to divorce if they feel the need to do so. In his defense of the Licensing Order, Milton created a pamphlet called Areopagitica which includes Milton’s arguments against the licensing of writings desired to be published. His main points come from biblical and Greek references that he uses to support his arguments. In fact, the name, Areopagitica comes from the speech by Isocrates who was an Athenian orator who gave a speech on Areopagus, which is a hill in Athens, where Isocrates attempted to restore the Council of the Areopagus.

In the same since, Milton was doing exactly what Isocrates was trying to do. He was trying to convince the people of the highest order to reconsider what they were trying to do in a formal manner that would cause them to think about it. In essence, the order made it so that one person had the ability to publish an official newspaper along with the responsibility of serving as censor for all other publications. This, of course, was not satisfactory to Milton. What Milton was stating in his pamphlet was not just a freedom of press per se but rather a freedom for an individual and their work to not be judged before becoming published. During the Licensing Order, if a work was found to be blasphemous or libelous then it would not be published and the author might face heavy scrutiny. This is where Milton uses certain arguments such as “books aren’t dead things” and that even blasphemous books should be published for its knowledge and understanding of the individual themselves.

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