Discussion

Your assignment should include a discussion on the issue of censorship of classic literature.

The texts in your exam assignment (the article and the video), as well as the text from the internet that we have recommended, offer important points for a meaningful discussion of the topic.

Firstly, both MichikoKakutani’s article (“Light Out, Huck, They Still Want to Sivilize You”) and the text from the internet (“How Censorship Shapes Literature”) illustrate that censorship of classic literature is subject to historical trends. For instance, as Kakutani mentions: “Efforts to sanitize classic literature have a long, undistinguished history. Everything from Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” to Roald Dahl’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” have been challenged or have suffered at the hands of uptight editors.”

But while Kakutani believes that censoring classic literature is and has always been wrong, the article “How Censorship Shapes Literature” shows that censorship was not always perceived as something bad. At times it was considered a necessary tool for ensuring the quality of published works. Both texts suggest that literature has been censored in different ways at different times, according to the social situation of the day....