Abstract

The article aims to explore two different approaches polarizing current debates in early modern studies on censorship. The traditional one essentially considers censorship as the result of external powers and coercive norms; the other tends to look at censorship and self-censorship as basic internal elements of the communicative process, thus minimizing the differences between censors and the censored. The paper discusses the advantages and drawbacks of these paradigms in the historiographical context, before focusing in the end on that peculiar and elusive form of self-censorship that goes by the name of «Aesopian Language.»