DK - Banned Books

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B ooks have been banned for as long as people have been writing things down. By 1559, the Catholic Church had compiled a list of banned books called the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Index of Prohibited Books). More than 400 years later, in 1989, Irans Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called for the author of The Satanic Verses , Salman Rushdie, to be executed for blasphemy.

Outright bans, in which authorities forbid a book to be published or sold, are not the only form of censorship. Rather, books can be made difficult to access, perhaps by being removed from schools and libraries. Just as insidiously, authors and publishers sometimes censor themselves by not creating or publishing work that might give offense.

The earliest guarantee of freedom of speech was in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, adopted in 1789 during the French Revolution. Two years later, in the United States, the First Amendment enshrined the same freedom in the Constitution. Despite these guarantees, books have continued to be banned, the rights of readers restricted, and court cases fought.

This book is full of controversial, provocative, and revolutionary literature whose publication, sale, or availability has been curtailed at some point in history. In the long run, such censorship is usually counterproductive. As knew, restricting access to a book serves only to create a best seller, because everyone wants to read a book that is forbidden.

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1

Pre-1900

Pre-1900 | Contents

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The Decameron

Giovanni Boccaccio

1370s

G iovanni Boccaccios The Decameron is set in 1348, the year the Black Death arrived in Florence. It features 10 young men and women who have fled Florence for a villa in the nearby hills. Over10 days, they amuse themselves by telling each other 100 stories.

Written in the Tuscan vernacular, the tales were immensely popular, but their content, which was often irreverent, and frequently bawdy, upset Church authorities. On February 7, 1497, a Dominican preacher called Girolamo Savonarola publicly burned The Decameron along with other sinful books and artworks, an event remembered as the Bonfire of the Vanities. Around 60 years later, Pope Paul IV listed The Decameron on the Roman Catholic Churchs Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Index of ) of 1559, condemning the depiction of religious figures engaging in sexual acts.

Nothing is so indecent that it cannot be said to another person if the proper words are used to convey it.

Giovanni Boccaccio

Although The Decameron was officially banned in 1564, copies continued to circulate, so the Church looked for ways to remove the offensive passages. A revised version that replaced the religious characters with other members of society but preserved the sexual references was authorized by Pope Gregory XIII in 1573, but nine years later, Pope Sixtus V ordered the removal of all sexual activity and innuendos from the book. Although this version was published, it did not satisfy Sixtus and remained on the Index.

Complaints regarding the immoral nature of The Decameron resurfaced in the US in the late 19th century, when public libraries called for a ban of the indecent text. Although the US Supreme Court ruled in 1894 that classic texts like The Decameron were not considered obscene, various states banned it, and booksellers who owned or sold the text faced harassment and prosecution.

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The Canterbury Tales

Geoffrey Chaucer

13871400

A cornerstone of English literature, Geoffrey Chaucers The Canterbury Tales presents a multilayered portrait of England in the Middle Ages. It features 31 pilgrimsa cross-section of societyon a four-day journey from Londons Tabard Inn to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral. On the way, the pilgrims spin tales for each others edification, amusement, or embarrassment. Their stories, prologues (where they introduce themselves to their fellow pilgrims), and many interjections not only reveal their individual characters but also expose a divided society in which corruption and hypocrisy flourish.

Some of the oldest four-letter words in English first saw print in Chaucers masterpiece. The text bursts with stories of fornication, infidelity, and flatulence. The five-times married Wife of Bath, the only secular female pilgrim in the group, challenges patriarchal expectations, boasting of her mastery over men and celebrating her sexuality. She uses St. Pauls teachings on marriage and the example of King Solomon, to support her arguments, in mockery of the Church.

The bishops, belike, taking his works but for jests and toys, in condemning other books, yet permitted [Chaucers] books to be read.

John Foxe , 1570

Despite its social criticism, especially in the unflattering portrayals of churchmen and women, represented by characters such as the Monk, the Pardoner, and the Summoner, The Canterbury Tales was not included on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum , the Churchs list of . Over the centuries, however, there were attempts to tone down, abridge, or omit some of the tales. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, sanitized versions of The Canterbury Tales were the only ones allowed in the US mail, thanks to the anti-obscenity Comstock laws of 1873, instigated by postal inspector Anthony Comstockgrounds, perhaps, for a Censors Tale.