Conclusion

Summary

The point of this book has been not to replace the censorship paradigm with that of defamation, but rather to suggest that we situate the former within the latter and reconsider its significance in terms of a broader cultural context. I have been at pains to establish that defamation was a significant social concern in the early modern period, and by focusing on the works of three major contemporary authors I attempt to demonstrate the literary importance of defamation. What can we now conclude about the place of literature and literary representations of power relations between the poet and state once we locate them within a more complex understanding of responses to transgressive language in early modern England?

Let us return briefly to the literary representations of slander to begin an answer to this question. In their respective works, Spenser and Jonson both endeavor to preserve poetry from allegations of slander by establishing them as stable and diametrically opposed categories of good and evil in order to distinguish between the two. They also imagine a symbiotic relationship between the virtuous poet and the enlightened ruler which will provide a united front against slander. However, when they represent their works as meeting with official disapproval, both indirectly redefine this criticism as defamation in order to discredit it. On the one hand this is a rhetorically powerful move because it aims to legitimate their work in the face of “slanderous” attacks. On the other hand, however, the state can respond to such imputations by labeling this poetic criticism as libel, a charge that is difficult to shake, given the popular and legal associations of poetry with slander.