Forbidden knowledge
1996
- sex in literature
- literature and morals
- knowledge, theory of, in literature
- sexo en literatura
- literatura y moral
- literatuurtheorie
- teoría del conocimiento en literatura
- moraal
- erkenntnistheorie
- knowledge
The story
Forbidden Knowledge boldly traces the tragic arc of Western literature and culture as it explores the notion of "forbidden knowledge," from the sexual innocence of Adam and Eve to the awe-inspiring discoveries of modern scientists who have created the atomic bomb and recombinant DNA. The result is a dire portrait of human presumption and of a culture that has abandoned all limits in the quest for knowledge and experience. The harrowing imagery that Shattuck presents is matched only by his faith that we can understand our grievous loss of innocence by reexamining our greatest myths and stories of the last two thousand years. In lively, lucid prose Shattuck explores our uncertain fate through such myths as that of Prometheus and a wide range of literary works, including Milton's Paradise Lost, the writings of the Marquis de Sade, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Melville's Billy Budd, and the poetry of Emily Dickinson. Parents and teachers should be aware that Chapter VII does not make appropriate reading for children and minors. In this seminal work, Shattuck breaks new ground in opening up a crucial subject never before accorded this full-scale treatment. Forbidden Knowledge impels us to a renewed effort to think judiciously about morality and the sacred during a decade of radical skepticism. Forbidden Knowledge represents the capstone of Roger Shattuck's career as one of America's most original and gifted thinkers.
What it’s like
Dense, unhurried essay prose with the cool, lamplit feel of a university library after closing: long sentences that circle a single idea, measured and lucid, rarely raising their voice. Its mood is sober and somber, a grave meditation on innocence lost, with a faint chill of unease at the edges as it moves from Eden to Prometheus to the laboratory. It suits a quiet weekend afternoon with a notebook, or a slow evening read when the mind wants to be provoked rather than soothed. Pacing is deliberate, built from chapter-length arguments that return to the same question from new angles, and the emotional register is elegiac and wary rather than despairing. Its readers are passed through several centuries of myth, poetry and fiction, from Milton and Shelley to Sade and Dickinson, and the tone stays intellectual throughout. Intensity is low in tone but not in content: the discussion of sexual and violent literature is frank and sometimes graphic in its quotations, and one chapter is explicitly unsuitable for children and minors. Written for readers who enjoy moral philosophy, literary criticism and the history of ideas, and who want a serious, reflective book on the costs of knowing too much.
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