This paper begins by exploring the censorship of The Song of Songs (1909), the first English translation of Hermann Sudermann’s Das Hohe Lied (1906).1 While the novel’s British reception is contextualized by the perceived social dangers of sexual representation in foreign literature, the essay demonstrates that Sudermann’s novel not only inscribes a critique of moral censure and the aesthetic idealism that often underpinned it, but also parodies the Naturalist novel which itself was believed to radically challenge sexual reticence in British fiction.
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2.
BassettT (2005) Circulating morals: George Moore’s attack on Victorian censorship. Pacific Coast Philosophy40: 73–89.
3.
BennettA (Jacob Tonson) (1910) Books and persons. The New Age8(5): 110.
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BennettA (Jacob Tonson) (1911) Books and persons. The New Age8(13): 303.
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CumminsA (2009) Emile Zola’s cheap English dress: the Vizetelly translations, late-Victorian print culture, and the crisis of literary value. Review of English Studies60(243): 108–32.
