Tilføjelse til “Grundtvig og censuren” i Grundtvig-Studier 2007

Tilføjelse til “Grundtvig og censuren ” i Grundtvig-Studier 2007[Supplement to “Grundtvig and censorship ” in Grundtvig-Studier 2007]By Flemming Lundgreen-NielsenThe supplement to “Grundtvig and censorship” in Grundtvig-Studier 2007 (44-90; 281) presents the discovery that Grundtvig’s idea from 1831 about an age limit for young writers may have been influenced by Ludvig Holberg’s description of academic restrictions in the fictitious state of Potu in his Latin novel Niels Kliim, 1741, chapter 8, recycled in his essay Epistle No. 395, 1750. A polite protest against Holberg by C. B. Tullin was published posthumously in 1773, emphasising the freedom of printing and the advantage of competition among writers. Grundtvig regrets his strange elitist conception already in 1836, but the point may be that he has in fact been inspired to some of his discussions on education and freedom of speech and printing by leading writers from the Danish Enlightenment of the eighteenth century in spite of his often proclaimed general dissociation from that period.

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Epilogue

The Revolution in Freedoms of Press and Speech ◽

10.1093/oso/9780197509197.003.0012 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 359-370

Author(s):

Wendell Bird

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

Common Law ◽

Freedom Of Speech ◽

Bill Of Rights ◽

Broad Definition ◽

Freedom Of Press ◽

New States ◽

Narrow Definition ◽

Fundamental Law ◽

Definition Of

A number of conundrums are explained by the fact that an expansive understanding of freedom of press and freedom of speech prevailed and became dominant in Britain and America after the mid-1760s, and are unsolved by those who claim that the narrow Blackstone-Mansfield definition of freedoms of press and speech was universally or generally accepted during the late eighteenth century. Those conundrums include why those freedoms would be defined as mere protection from licensing that ended nearly a century before, why there was a steady stream of essays championing a broad definition and opposing a narrow definition, why American colonists and English radical Whigs threatened with prosecution would advocate narrow instead of broad freedoms, why there was such a wide chasm between restrictive law and permissive practices of speech and press, why nine of the eleven new states that adopted new fundamental law found it necessary to protect freedom of press, why every one of those declarations of rights gave the broadest protection without express exceptions rather than using Blackstone’s language, why the federal Bill of Rights similarly used the broadest language and rejected common law limitations, as well as why Fox’s Libel Act was able to attract majority support in Parliament.

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