Author: David Nash

Publisher: Pickering & Chatto Publishers

Published: 2010-03-01

Total Pages: 1184

ISBN-13: 9781781445174

Blasphemy is the battleground where religious and secular worlds come into conflict. Blasphemy laws are used to discipline unruly populations, to emphasize governmental authority and, latterly in the West, to protect the religious beliefs of others. To those accused of it as crime it has appeared unnecessary, anachronistic and oppressive. Victims of the crime have seen laws as their only protection against individuals seeking to undermine not simply beliefs but wider standards of morality and behaviour within society. These victims of the crime have also used the concept of blasphemy to reassert their own identities around specific moral imperatives. Blasphemy has a history which reaches into issues of conflict, religious belief, freedom of expression, and is bound up with the growth and development of new media. This four-volume reset edition draws together a wide variety of rare primary sources relating to blasphemy from the Enlightenment through to the modern era. Sources are arranged to represent both sides of the debate, giving voice to the blasphemer and victim. New editorial material includes a general introduction, volume introductions, headnotes, endnotes and a consolidated index in the final volume. The edition is broadly interdisciplinary and will be important for scholars of Legal History, Religious Studies, Literature, History of Art, Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Studies.