Artistic merit is the artistic quality or value of any givenwork of art, music, film,literature, sculpture or painting.
The1921 US trial of James Joyce's novelUlysses concerned the publication of theNausicaa episode by the literary magazineThe Little Review, which was serializing the novel. Though not required to do so by law,John Quinn, the lawyer for the defence, decided to produce three literary experts to attest to the literary merits ofUlysses, as well asThe Little Review's broader reputation.[1] The first expert witness wasPhilip Moeller, of theTheatre Guild, who interpretedUlysses using theFreudian method of unveiling the subconscious mind, which prompted one of the judges to ask him to "speak in a language that the court could understand".[2] The next witness wasScofield Thayer, editor ofThe Dial, another literary magazine of the time, who "was forced to admit that if he had had the desire to publishUlysses he would have consulted a lawyer first—and not published it".[2] The final witness was English novelist, lecturer, and criticJohn Cowper Powys, who declared thatUlysses was a "beautiful piece of work in no way capable of corrupting the minds of young girls".[2] The editors were found guilty under laws associated with theComstock Act of 1873, which made it illegal to circulate materials deemedobscene in theU.S. mail, incurred a $100 fine, and were forced to cease publishingUlysses inThe Little Review. It was not until the 1933 caseUnited States v. One Book Called Ulysses that the novel could be published in the United States without fear of prosecution.
Another important obscenity trial occurred 1960 in Britain, when the full unexpurgated edition ofD. H. Lawrence'sLady Chatterley's Lover was published byPenguin Books. Thetrial of Penguin under theObscene Publications Act 1959 was a major public event and a test of the newobscenity law. The 1959 act (introduced byRoy Jenkins) had made it possible for publishers to escape conviction if they could show that a work was of literary merit. Several academic critics and experts of diverse kinds, includingE. M. Forster,Helen Gardner,Richard Hoggart,Raymond Williams,Norman St John-Stevas andJohn Robinson, Anglican bishop of Woolwich, were called as witnesses for the defence, and the verdict, delivered on 2 November 1960, was "not guilty".[3] This resulted in a far greater degree of freedom for publishing explicit sexual material in the United Kingdom.
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