Bowdlerism是指删除或重述文本中可能被某些读者视为冒犯性内容的做法。这个词的动词形式是“bowdlerize”，而“删除”是同义词。“鲍德勒主义”一词是一个同名词——这个词来源于托马斯·鲍德勒博士（1754-1825）真实或虚构的人物或地方的专有名称。托马斯·鲍德勒博士于1807年出版了威廉·莎士比亚戏剧的删节版，其中“省略了不能在家庭中恰当朗读的词语和表达。”

起源：从莎士比亚那里让世界“安全”

维多利亚时代对莎士比亚的看法在鲍德勒主义的创作中起到了重要作用，而不仅仅是鲍德勒：据尼古拉斯·A·贝卢斯科尼说，他的姐姐在推广这种做法方面也起到了很大作用。巴斯班斯在《每一本书都有它的读者：印刷文字震撼世界的力量》中写道：

"Long before the British physician Thomas W. Bowdler (1754-1825) and his sister, Henrietta Bowdler (1754-1830), took it upon themselves to make the plays of William Shakespeare 'safe' for innocent eyes, the wholesale editing of another author's writing so that it might be more palatable to prudish tastes was known as 'castration' to some, 'winnowing' by others. But with the publication of the first edition of the Family Shakespeare in 1807, the world of letters got a new verb—bowdlerize—to identify the process of literary expurgation. ... Immensely popular in their time, these sanitized versions of the plays were the principal text by which England's national poet reached thousands of impressionable readers for close to a century, the dialogue discreetly pruned of any reference to God or Jesus, with every hint of sexual pleasure or misconduct snipped out. Some discriminating readers were outraged, to be sure. A writer for the British Critic railed that the Bowdlers had 'purged and castrated' Shakespeare, 'tattooed and beplaistered him, and cauterized and phlebotomized him.'"

巴斯班斯解释说，后来的书籍和词典出版商严重依赖鲍德勒主义，字面上是“删去”诺亚·韦伯斯特词典等作品的大部分。另一个著名的例子可以从美国超验主义者和作家沃尔特·惠特曼（Walt Whitman）的“淡化”英国版《草叶集》中看出。

鲍德勒主义批判观

评论家们似乎对莎士比亚的伟大作品的歪曲感到相当不安。这种做法不仅仅是对这位吟游诗人的著名戏剧进行消毒，实际上还破坏了他的作品，使其远不如预期的那么尖锐和有力。理查德S。兰德尔在《自由与禁忌：色情与自我分裂的政治》一书中提出了这一观点：

"More than words were changed. Double entendres and sexual allusions of various sorts were cut out or restated. In King Lear, the Fool's codpiece song was eliminated, as was Goneril's lament about the knights' brothel activities. Pepys's faithful and literate recording of his sexual experiences, and fanciful pictures, such as the voyeuristic Lilliputian army that subdued Gulliver or Swift's classically nonerotic detailing of the Brobdignagian breast, fared no better."

杰弗里·休斯（Geoffrey Hughes）在《咒骂百科全书：英语世界咒骂、亵渎、粗俗语言和种族诽谤的社会历史》中表示赞同：

"Although bowdlerism is regarded as something of a joke from a contemporary 'liberated' viewpoint, it has proved far more tenacious and widespread than is generally realized. Many works lacking any tincture of obscenity, some at the heart of the English literary tradition, are bowdlerized. It is only fairly recently that school editions of Shakespeare have become unexpurgated. An American study by James Lynch and Bertrand Evans, High School English Textbooks: A Critical Examination (1963) showed that all of the eleven prescribed editions of Macbeth were bowdlerized."

休斯还承认，如果不是这个名字，这种做法实际上比鲍德勒家族早了几十年。他写道，即使在今天，除了莎士比亚的作品外，鲍德勒主义在其他作品中也很明显。乔纳森·斯威夫特（Jonathan Swift）于1726年出版的《格列佛游记》（Gulliver's Travels）版本“仍然删减了更粗俗的物理细节。”休斯认为，事实上，鲍德勒主义是美国更广泛运动的一部分。该运动的团体试图在全国范围内禁止作为学校课程一部分的全部文本。

鲍德勒主义与审查制度

虽然鲍德勒主义和审查制度之间有相似之处，审查制度是以道德尊严和家庭价值观的名义限制言论自由的一种措施，但这两种做法之间有一些重要的区别。Philip Thody，在“别这么做！”《禁止使用词典》解释说，鲍德勒主义通常是个人努力对抗审查制度，而审查制度通常由政府实体强制执行。他进一步解释了这些做法是如何实施的，目的是什么：

"While censorship is usually imposed on books before they are published, and leads to their being withdrawn, bowdlerism comes afterwards, and is a form of editing. The book in question still appears, but in a form judged suitable to what is seen as an audience needing protection."

现代世界的鲍德勒主义

凯特·布里奇（Kate Burridge）在《Gob的礼物：英语语言历史的点滴》（Gift of the Gob:Morsels of English Language History）一书中说，虽然鲍德勒主义在维多利亚时代可能已经普及，但时至今日，它的影响仍体现在广泛的领域，如教育，但在宗教、健康和营养等看似截然不同的问题上：

"Bowdlerism targeted profanity and sexual explicitness and [Thomas] Bowdler's activities led to the progressive sanitising (or 'bowdlerising') of a range of works—even the Bible was a targeted text. Clearly, these days the definition of 'dirt' has shifted considerably and the goals of modern-day bowdlerites are very different. Texts are now likely to be cleansed of references to things like race, ethnicity, and religion. The U.S. has seen a lot of these kinds of cleaning-up activities in recent years. They might even extend to the food superstitions of today—calories, carbohydrates, cholesterol, sugar, caffeine, and salt. Apparently, U.S. publishers are now expected to omit references to, and illustrations of, foods that are high in these shocking substances."

Burridge接着指出，有多少被认为不健康的食物被去除了。当鲍德勒兄弟姐妹制定了他们的排除规则清单时，他们可能没有想到这种做法会延伸到这些看似平凡的主题，也没有想到清洗不受欢迎的引用会变得如此政治化。

来源

• 巴斯班斯，尼古拉斯A。每本书都有它的读者：印刷文字的力量震撼世界，哈珀柯林斯，2005年。
• 布里奇，凯特。Gob的礼物：英语语言历史的一小部分。哈珀柯林斯澳大利亚，2011年。
• 休斯，杰弗里。咒骂百科全书：英语国家的咒骂、亵渎、脏话和种族诽谤的社会历史。M.E.夏普，2006年。
• Randall，Richard S。自由与禁忌：色情与自我分裂的政治。加利福尼亚大学出版社，1989。
• 托迪，菲利普，别这样禁止使用的词典。圣马丁出版社，1997年。