Literary Censorship

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Recommended: Adverse effect of censorship

Growing up in a place where free speech is strongly pressed, why is censorship no stranger? We live in a world where television, video games, music and even literary documents have all been censored. Literature can be defined as the body of written works of a language, period, or culture. This is everything from newspapers and magazines to textbooks and novels. Literary censorship has been around for a long time. These books are challenged and banned. When a book is challenged there has been an attempt to remove the book or document based on the opinions of a group of people. If that is successful then the book or document is banned. A challenge is not only made based on a point of view from a person, or a group of people, but it is made to remove the material from classrooms curriculums and libraries. Thankfully most challenges are unsuccessful. So why are books challenged? Usually they are challenged to protect children from difficult ideas. According to the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom the top three reasons for challenging are; the content is sexually explicit, contains offensive language, and not appropriate for certain age groups. But this isn’t something that’s new. This has been going on for a long time, and classical books have been banned. Book like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain was banned because it had violent, racial and strong adult language. In 1949 Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens and The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare were also targeted because “they tend to engender hatred of the Jew as a person and as a race.” (Rosenberg v. Board of Education of City of New York.) The court ruled against the ban. Parents may agree with some of the bans, not ... ... middle of paper ... ...one stands for it. Sheehan, Dan. "Manuscripts Don't Burn: a Timeline of Literary Censorship, Destruction, and Liberation." Pen America . N.p., 20 Sept. 2013. Web. 08 Nov. 2013. destruction-and-liberation>. Site shows the timeline of challenging books, banning them, and even extreme ways of eliminating them. It gives insight to how long censorship has been around and they ways people attempted to enforce it. It helped find accounts of censorship. TIME Staff. "Books: Banned Books." TIME.com. N.p., 9 May 1938. Web. 08 Nov. 2013. . Article showed list of banned books and process of banning books. It gives an insight to just how large the problem really is. Helped name some shocking books on the banned list.

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