Description
Throughout history, literature has been censored and bowdlerized for a variety of reasons: subject matter, style, content. Usually, parts are taken out of context and misinterpreted. As popular as mysteries are throughout the world, these stories are often banned as well, such as Snow Falling on Cedars by David Gutterson and Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. Looking at books spanning three centuries, we will explore a number of works that have been so challenged: Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Arthur Conan Dolyle’s A Study in Scarlet, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River, Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl. Using mini-lectures and seminar discussions, we will examine these selections, in order of publication as listed above. The public library has copies of each, or you can purchase them from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Thriftbooks or AbeBooks.com. Note: Please read “The Tell -Tale Heart” (short story) and A Study in Scarlet (novella) for the first class. Class meets: 2/3, 2/17, 3/3, 3/17, and 3/31.
