Zounds
Frank Kermode: Blasphemy, 14 January 2002
Blasphemy: Impious Speech in the West from the 17th to the 19th Century
by Alain Cabantous, translated by Eric Rauth.
Columbia, 288 pp., £21.50, February 2002,0 231 11876 7 Show More
by Alain Cabantous, translated by Eric Rauth.
Columbia, 288 pp., £21.50, February 2002,
“... used the law against political opponents. The example given here concerns the bookseller Thomas Williams, who was charged with blasphemy for publishing Tom Paine’s Age of Reason. Although Paine said that the Bible described a devil under the name of God, his real offence was of course his support of the revolutions in America and France. Blake remarked ... ”