I truly liked the way the Icelanders think and Jmacyk it would be glorious to see a story where big business construction had to literally have board meetings with the elves and goblins and anyone else caught up in development. Just thinking of the devious hard nosed concessions that could be wrung out from the humans.
This subject has taken a welcome serious turn but I would never have titled it as I did except for the original link.
Retrospective censoring of any literature makes me see red and steam comes out of my ears. One of my rant subjects is criticism of past literature without taking into consideration or having some knowledge of the era in which it was written. Literature of all kinds is social history, it reflects exactly the attitudes and customs of the day, whether it concerns racism, religion sex etc and we should read it in that light. Also giving a thought to the different type of readers it was aimed at, such as the author's peers, or to influence politics, or the so-called "working class" or Victorians sitting around while Papa read to the family and so on.
Of course Dickens is depressing, he was trying to draw attention to appalling conditions, disease, extreme poverty, huge social divide between wealthy and poor of Victorian England. No point trying to pretend life was good.
As for cutting the dirty bits out of Shakespeare it's not all easily recognised, but the raucous crowds in the Globe Theatre loved and enjoyed all those double meanings, it helped those with pretty hard lives have some fun and the more we know the better we can appreciate his brilliance with words. I had a Jewish friend who would not read Shakespeare because he had been highly offended by the portrayal of Shylock and I could understand why, but that was exactly how the Jews were perceived and treated then.
Agatha Christie, from 20thC, has several racist stereotypes which have not been changed, although the title of one novel, "Then There Were One", is not as I first knew it.
Modern day censoring of previous racial content seems to come from guilt, but that is exactly how white people spoke and acted towards all people of colour not just black people. Orientals had a hard time of it as well. We should be able to read and feel disgust but not try to pretend it didn't happen rather face it. This type of censoring is a covert way of re-writing history and it seriously bothers me.
