Modernism and the Law

Robert Spoo is Chapman Distinguished Professor at the University of Tulsa College of Law, USA. A former editor of the James Joyce Quarterly, his many previous publications include Without Copyrights: Piracy, Publishing, and the Public Domain and James Joyce and the Language of History. His work on Modernism and the Law was supported by a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship.

• List of illustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Oscar Wilde, Man of Law2. Obscenity and Censorship3. Copyright, Patronage, and Courtesy4. Privacy, Publicity, Defamation, and Blackmail 5. Ezra Pound, Man of WarAnnotated List of Statutes, Treaties, and Cases CitedWorks CitedIndex

In a style that appropriately reads as a concise legal brief, Robert Spoo analyzes the tension between censorship (a form of “super-copyright” controlled by a government in league with “purity groups”) and copyright itself, which intrinsically is incapable of protecting allegedly indecent works. . . . Literary modernism should be seen, then, as Spoo rightly sees it, as what came about when the constraints of censorship (ever porous) met in complex ways with the protections (never tight) of copyright.