The Politics of Reading throughout History
By Sophia Zhang
Literature Editor
Reading and writing have always been inherently political actions. As such, censorship, banning books, and regulating the contents of published works have been part of the literary world for centuries.
Going back to the Roman Republic, we can notice political critiques of Augustus, the first Roman Emperor, who aligned himself with the gods in the sculptures and art he would commission to legitimize his right to rule. Disagreeing with many of Augustus’ decisions, the Roman poet Ovid included many references to the emperor in his collection of poems, the Metamorphoses. In the same vein Augustus likened himself to the deities of the pantheon, Ovid critiques Augustus’ abuses of power in his portrayal of the gods, especially in their routine of giving out punishments harsher than the crime and rewarding the undeserving. As such, the controversial poet was exiled to the Black Sea, where he lived out the remainder of his days.
About thirteen hundred years later, in the Middle Ages, when the Christian Church was the principal dictator of all literary works that were being published, we see another publication of an inherently political piece of literature in Bocaccio’s Decameron. In his collection of one hundred stories, which could only be disseminated because the plague monopolized all the Church’s time, he writes about the tales a group of wealthy nobles tell themselves as a form of escapism. The stories have a distinctly comical tone, and almost all feature raunchy, sexual content, distinguishing it from the usual publications of the time. Although the group of stories might seem like a fun time, they are also critical of the Church, which was the main driving force behind most aspects of everyday life. Clergymen are depicted as deceiving, amoral, hypocritical, and zealous in the pursuit of their sexual desires; religious characters are mocked for their dedication to God and the concepts of Heaven and Hell, which were foundational for the Christian institution were made out to be nonsensical. Such criticisms of the Church would have been highly controversial.
Moving on to the twentieth century, we can see this continued tradition of censoring literary works in the practice of book bans, especially in the United States with the rise of modernism after the Great War, which was bolder in subject matter. The prohibition of books dealing with provocative subjects became commonplace as they went against the traditional values of America. While many books are no longer banned today, literary works have been scrutinized, often mainly if they deal with race, sexuality, and gender. Examples of scholarly works that have been criticized in the U.S.A. include The Hate You Give, a story of racial discrimination and police brutality in America, and Maus, a story about Jewish concentration camps during World War II told in a comic book form featuring anthropological mice. The latter was banned by a school board in Tennessee for sexually explicit content. Fundamentally, the purpose of literary censorship is to control the narrative and how people understand society. Promoting books of all kinds is vital in a climate of political extremes, regardless of controversy. Fighting censorship and reading diverse books about important subjects is instrumental in forming critical thinking skills and challenging societal norms.