About this episode
‘Bowdlerise’ is a word that’s fallen out of usage and fashion because the practice of it has (until recently) been laughed off the stage of culture. It means to snip out offensive language, characters or episodes from it. It was named after a 19th century doctor who we’ll talk about in the episode, and it seems like it’s making a comeback.
In these strange, upside times, it’s not Victorian moralists who are demanding that books be sanitised, but secular-progressive moralists. Roald Dahl, Enid Blyton, Ian Fleming’s James Bond—they have all recently felt the pain of the bowdleriser’s scalpel.
What are we to make of this? More importantly, what does the return of bowdlerising tell us about the nature of modern morality, and how to preach the gospel to a culture that seems deeply sensitive to offence?
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