‘Censorable’ Structures in W. S. Maugham's NovelsLinguistic and Cultural Elements

Abstract

Communist censorship stigmatised the Romanian cultural life in general, literature in particular. Rejecting and banning anything related to fascism, mysticism, chauvinism, religion, anything demoralising or sentimental, confusion causing or hostile to the regime was common practice. W. S. Maugham’s novels contain many of the historic, cultural and social elements the regime intended to keep people away from. Therefore, some of the translations of his novels (into Romanian) were banned and other versions were published later. The Razor’s Edge and The Painted Veil are two of the censored
novels and the present paper deals with these aforementioned aspects from the linguistic point of view, by considering also the translation issues.