Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction Literature, life and education: some problems about how they relate to one another
- 1 Literature and truth
- 2 Literary criticism and literary education
- 3 Objectivity and subjectivity in literary education
- 4 The subordination of criticism to theory: structuralism and deconstructionism
- 5 Literature and the education of the emotions
- 6 Empathy and literary education
- 7 Literary intention and literary education
- 8 Literature, morality and censorship
- Notes
- Index
8 - Literature, morality and censorship
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 June 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction Literature, life and education: some problems about how they relate to one another
- 1 Literature and truth
- 2 Literary criticism and literary education
- 3 Objectivity and subjectivity in literary education
- 4 The subordination of criticism to theory: structuralism and deconstructionism
- 5 Literature and the education of the emotions
- 6 Empathy and literary education
- 7 Literary intention and literary education
- 8 Literature, morality and censorship
- Notes
- Index
Summary
aeschylus: (To Euripides) What are the qualities that you look for in a good poet?
euripides: Technical skill – and he should teach a lesson, make people into better citizens.
aeschylus: And if you have failed to do this? If you have presented good men, noble men, as despicable wretches, what punishment do you think you deserve?
dionysius: Death. No good asking him.
aeschylus: Well, now, look at the characters I left him. Fine, stalwart characters, larger than life, men who didn't shirk their responsibilities… I depicted men of valour, lion-hearted characters like Patrocles and Teucer, encouraging the audience to identify themselves with these heroes when the call to battle came. I didn't clutter my stage with harlots like Phaedra or Stheneboea. No one can say I have ever put an erotic female into any play of mine.
euripides: How could you? You've never met one.
aeschylus: And thank heaven for that. Whereas you and your household had only too much experience of Aphrodite, if I remember rightly.
dionysius: He's got you there Euripides. See what happened in your own home when you made other men's wives behave like that on stage.
euripides: And did I invent the story of Phaedra?
aeschylus: No, no, such things do happen. But the poet should keep quiet about them, not put them on the stage for everyone to copy.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Literary EducationA Revaluation, pp. 149 - 162Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1983