Lining
one corridor inside the National Library are hundreds of books which
censors did not want you to see. From the Song of Songs to the
Satanic Verses, Lord of the Flies to Lady Chatterly's
Lover, these books appalled, challenged and enticed the society
of their times, and were all deemed unfit to be seen by the public.
The exhibition aims primarily to spark debate- to make us question
these books, the legislation under which they were banned, and the
societies which banned them.
Perhaps predictably, books which display any kind of anti-clerical leanings make up a large part of the library's collection, and indeed were the first kind of literature to be cautioned at all. From David Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion to Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, these books were seen as indecent due to a glorification of paganism, misrepresentation of biblical verse or simple questioning of common belief.
As far back as 1559, the Catholic Church's Index Librorum Prohibitum denounced such books, and even today certain communities keep their own blacklist well stocked with fiction and non-fiction tomes alike. As well as non-Christian books, such as the Kama Sutra and the Koran, the Index, updated and used until 1966, urged readers away from such philosophers as Galileo, David Hume and George Buchanan, and, later, Jean Paul Sartre. The Spanish Inquisition's own censorship was more selective and direct- the library's collection shows a book on republics by Roman y Zamora, with an entire chapter obliterated, line by line, in thick black ink.
As the Protestant Reformation increased literacy and production of books, so the need for censorship rose, and such a need to curtail what is read and what is believed surely goes to show the incredible power of the written word. We see it in more recent pieces of the library's collection, such as the infamous Dodgy Dossier, produced by the British government shortly before the Iraq war, which made unsubstantiated claims that the country had weapons of mass destruction. The document, released under the Freedom of Information Act five years after its original production, was considered unsuitable to be seen by the public. Just as George Buchanan's philosophical works were banned due to their criticism of Mary Queen of Scots, books which are considered dangerous are often ones which encourage civil unrest, a distrust of the government, or a challenge to order. Knowledge is power, and governments have always been wary of how much of this power they should allow their electorate to have.
Elsewhere in the library's exhibition, Madonna's Erotica sex book is placed alongside the American-made What's Happening To My Body Book, and the ever-scandalous Lady Chatterly's Lover. The juxtaposition of such texts begs the question- What, exactly, makes a book obscene? Sex spawns all kinds, including biology textbooks, erotic literature and porn, and often the line between them is blurred. The Obscene Publications Act of 1959 goes some way to address this, specifying that sexual content in a book may be overlooked if it is 'justified as being for the public good', so our textbooks are safe (though some are still banned in the US), and other publications are pardoned if they pass the Hicklin Test, and found not to 'deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences'. This means that sexual content is absolutely out of the question in children's literature, while the memoir of a porn-star entitled Inside Linda Lovelace was deemed unlikely to 'corrupt those who were likely to read it'.
Finally, the Obscene Publications Act pardons works which have literary merit, and this seems to be key to why the list of banned books is so long and so highly populated by books now considered classics. Whether whistleblowers for political change, like Animal Farm or Of Mice and Men, or studies of detestable character types like those of Lolita or American Psycho, these books foreground a part of the world normally kept under wraps. Are the best books all on this list? Have those books which have challenged, outraged and enticed us all done so because they were so good, so well-written, so thought-provoking that they simply could not be ignored?
Printed in large red letters on one wall of the exhibition is a quote from a Mr Oscar Wilde, who certainly seemed to hold this view- 'An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all'.
Perhaps predictably, books which display any kind of anti-clerical leanings make up a large part of the library's collection, and indeed were the first kind of literature to be cautioned at all. From David Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion to Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, these books were seen as indecent due to a glorification of paganism, misrepresentation of biblical verse or simple questioning of common belief.
As far back as 1559, the Catholic Church's Index Librorum Prohibitum denounced such books, and even today certain communities keep their own blacklist well stocked with fiction and non-fiction tomes alike. As well as non-Christian books, such as the Kama Sutra and the Koran, the Index, updated and used until 1966, urged readers away from such philosophers as Galileo, David Hume and George Buchanan, and, later, Jean Paul Sartre. The Spanish Inquisition's own censorship was more selective and direct- the library's collection shows a book on republics by Roman y Zamora, with an entire chapter obliterated, line by line, in thick black ink.
As the Protestant Reformation increased literacy and production of books, so the need for censorship rose, and such a need to curtail what is read and what is believed surely goes to show the incredible power of the written word. We see it in more recent pieces of the library's collection, such as the infamous Dodgy Dossier, produced by the British government shortly before the Iraq war, which made unsubstantiated claims that the country had weapons of mass destruction. The document, released under the Freedom of Information Act five years after its original production, was considered unsuitable to be seen by the public. Just as George Buchanan's philosophical works were banned due to their criticism of Mary Queen of Scots, books which are considered dangerous are often ones which encourage civil unrest, a distrust of the government, or a challenge to order. Knowledge is power, and governments have always been wary of how much of this power they should allow their electorate to have.
Elsewhere in the library's exhibition, Madonna's Erotica sex book is placed alongside the American-made What's Happening To My Body Book, and the ever-scandalous Lady Chatterly's Lover. The juxtaposition of such texts begs the question- What, exactly, makes a book obscene? Sex spawns all kinds, including biology textbooks, erotic literature and porn, and often the line between them is blurred. The Obscene Publications Act of 1959 goes some way to address this, specifying that sexual content in a book may be overlooked if it is 'justified as being for the public good', so our textbooks are safe (though some are still banned in the US), and other publications are pardoned if they pass the Hicklin Test, and found not to 'deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences'. This means that sexual content is absolutely out of the question in children's literature, while the memoir of a porn-star entitled Inside Linda Lovelace was deemed unlikely to 'corrupt those who were likely to read it'.
Finally, the Obscene Publications Act pardons works which have literary merit, and this seems to be key to why the list of banned books is so long and so highly populated by books now considered classics. Whether whistleblowers for political change, like Animal Farm or Of Mice and Men, or studies of detestable character types like those of Lolita or American Psycho, these books foreground a part of the world normally kept under wraps. Are the best books all on this list? Have those books which have challenged, outraged and enticed us all done so because they were so good, so well-written, so thought-provoking that they simply could not be ignored?
Printed in large red letters on one wall of the exhibition is a quote from a Mr Oscar Wilde, who certainly seemed to hold this view- 'An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all'.
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