I am Kyle's self-indulgence

I've been slacking on Banned Book Week this year, but fortunately, plenty of others have been carrying the torch for me.

As we all know, there are lots of excellent modern books that are banned from schools due to parents' objections (which are sometimes valid, but often misguided and uninformed). What's amazing to me, though, is that relatively benign books are banned while other, far more obscene books, continue to be taught.

The most obscene, offensive, and objectionable book I have ever read is Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. As a collection of tales told by pilgrims on a journey, it ranges from high-minded tales of chivalry to bawdy humor, including jokes that would be too gross and low-brow even for the Farrelly Brothers. Sprinkled throughout these latter stories is some of the most vulgar language of Chaucer's time (although modern translators tend to use other antiquated words rather than the truly corresponding curses of today).

I think it's ironic that this most offensive work of literature from the late 1300s is rarely banned from schools, while far more mild books are. This is no doubt due to its status as a time-honored classic of English literature.

In America we have an attitude that classic literature is inherently more clean, pure, and noble than most literature written today. Our memory is short. We recall mostly the works of the last 300 years or so, a period when society strictly suppressed offensiveness and vulgarity in literature. Things were not always this way, though. Prior to this prudish era, people were a little more open, and read edifying religious stories along with raunchy jokes, as exemplified in The Canterbury Tales.