Dangerous reading  

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This page Dangerous reading is part of the mores series. Illustration: Index Librorum Prohibitorum of the Catholic Church.
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This page Dangerous reading is part of the mores series.
Illustration: Index Librorum Prohibitorum of the Catholic Church.

"As the monster confessed it, it was from reading Suetonius and the descriptions of the orgies of Tiberius, Caracalla, etc., that the idea was joined of locking children in his castles, torturing them, and then killing them."--Psychopathia Sexualis (1886) by Richard von Krafft-Ebing


"The novels of the Marquis de Sade have killed more children than could kill twenty Gilles de Rais, they kill every day, they will continue to kill, they kill their souls as well as their bodies. What's more, while Gilles de Rais has paid his crimes during his lifetime: he died by the hands of the executioner, his body was delivered to the fire, and his ashes were scattered to the wind, what power could incinerate all the books of Marquis de Sade? That is what nobody can do, these are books, and thus crimes that will never perish."--Jules Janin in Dictionnaire de la conversation et de la lecture, translation J.-W. Geerinck

Frontispiece of "Pernicious Literature" (1889)
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Frontispiece of "Pernicious Literature" (1889)

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In the history of literature, private reading was at times viewed dangerous. It was argued that reading acted as a tranquilliser and was especially dangerous when practised by subordinate groups such as common people, youth or women. At the conclusion of the sixteenth-century, and later on, unsupervised reading was considered subversive by secular and theocratic authorities.

From the early sixteenth century onwards it was viewed as especially dangerous for women to read fiction. This notion originated from men who feared fiction for its potential to evoke dangerous emotions such as love.

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