Reading these days is
very much taken for granted. We use reading for everything—direction,
entertainment, education, religion and communication. In the middle ages
reading was not taken for granted. Many people were illiterate and those who
could read tended to be the rich and privileged. Books were very expensive and
somewhat hard to come by—they didn’t have any Barnes and Nobles like we have
today—their books were commissioned and hand written until the printing press
was finally invented.
Most
of the reading people did was for religious purposes. The Bible was the most
popular book. If you had any book it was probably the Bible. If you were
reading any other things such as Roman or Greek literature you read it
allegorically—everything was symbolism for religious things. Reading those
kinds of things just for fun and just for the story was frowned upon.
People
also read for communication as we do now. They didn’t have all the technology
that we have today, so letters were the mode of communication. Of course in
order to communicate via letter you need to be able to read which means most of
the common people wouldn’t have been able to communicate over longer distances.
This means that only the rich would have been able to communicate without being
face to face with the person they wanted to communicate with. This, in a way,
is a type of censorship.
Since
the common people couldn’t read or write, they would have had to rely on others—the
church—to tell them what was said in the Bible. The church would have had a lot
of control over the morals of the people in this way. They simply had to tell
them their interpretation of the Bible, what they thought was good or bad, and
the people had to listen. They didn’t have any way of checking whether the
information they were receiving was correct. Today censorship is still around. It
isn’t as blatant as it once may have been but it is still here. In middle
school there were books we weren’t allowed to read because they were not
appropriate for our age group. There are also books that have been altogether
banned from schools because of their content. Generally the books that are
banned have very controversial subject matter in them. However as I have grown
and gotten older I’ve noticed that things are much more available then once
they were. I think our society and our morals are changing, we think it’s
better that people are able to choose what they read rather than be told what
is suitable to read. I don’t think that censorship today really maintains the
morals of our society, I think it more reflects the morals of our society. People
today have so much more access to information that it is not only harder to
censor things but people are also more ready to fight censorship. People today
don’t like to be told what is ok for them to read and what isn’t.
