On campus, I
bemoan my fate each time I have to lug around my hefty textbooks. I usually
force my husband to carry my Shakespeare book. However, my husband should be
grateful we did not live in the time of clay papers or my books would be much
heavier.
In my last post,
I talked about the reasons why I read: for my imagination, understanding, problem
solving, awareness, and to help others. From the library presentation, we
learned about many different forms of writing in Mesopotamian/roman/medieval
times. These different eras each sought for ways to write in order to also
communicate with others and to spread awareness. Indeed, the simple need for a receipt in the Mesopotamian era demonstrates how necessary it is to document and record in each society. This need prevails as all people, from every generation, have a desire to remember and to record simple concepts, simple transitions, or profound memories through writing.
From the library
presentation, we learned about how writing has changed throughout the years
depending on the writing materials available. The Mesopotamians wrote on clay.
The librarian showed to us a receipt from this era that weighed far more than a
simple slip of paper. We also looked at a Roman ID made from metal, writing
materials from plants and lambskin. The collected texts that the librarian
showed us included the receipt, ID, the Bible and the Book of Hours.
From this
presentation, we can answer the question about whether or not censorship plays
a part in maintaining the morals of a society. I would argue that yes,
censorship does control the morals of a society. That is, censorship allows a
certain body of people to decide what will be the morals of the society and
through writing, they can produce propaganda to support those morals. For
example, monks wrote the Bible that the librarian showed us. The monks were
able to choose what parts of the Bible they would include and also what images
they would paint on the gold sleeve pages. Similarly, Dante could produce his
own idea of morals and spread his ideas through his literary work. When
censorship controls what writers can say (as we saw during the Roman period),
then certain morals that were deemed “acceptable” are the ones that we now receive
today, while other ideas were censored from the clay, metal, plant, lambskin,
or paper writing supplies.
