‘Censored’ is a series of eight free evening lectures taking place at the National Print Museum from September 2014 to August 2015.
The advent of printing in fifteenth-century Europe meant that texts, ideas, and opinions could be reproduced and diffused on an unprecedented scale. In response, most European countries established new institutions, laws and other mechanisms to censor the press. Ireland was no exception. This series will look at the ways in which the press was regulated in this country from the arrival of printing in 1551 to the late twentieth century. Speakers will discuss literary, political and religious works that have been censored; consider the ways in which printers, booksellers and authors were reprimanded for publishing controversial texts; and reflect on the various ways in which press regulation has changed over time.
Lectures will take place on the first Thursday of each month at 6.30pm. Please visit the National Print Museum website, or call 01 6603770 for further details.
Part 1, Lectures 1-4
Lecture 1: Thursday, 4 September 2014
Prof Ray Gillespie (NUIM): Preserving the minds of the lower orders: censorship and freedom in early modern Ireland.
Lecture 2: Thursday, 2 October 2014
Dr Eamon Darcy (NUIM): ‘Regulating the printed word and the tongue’: Censorship in seventeenth century Ireland
Lecture 3: Thursday, 6 November 2014
Dr Suzanne Forbes (UCD): ‘False, scandalous and seditious’: Politically motivated press censorship in early eighteenth-century Ireland.
Lecture 4: Thursday, 4 December 2014
Prof. James Kelly (DCU): The Control of Print in Eighteenth Century Ireland
Details of Part 2 of the series will be announced in the National Print Museum’s February-July 2015 Events Guide.