Index Librorum Prohibitorum

Caribbean Pleasure Industry: Tourism, Sexuality, and AIDs in the Dominican Republic, by Mark Padilla, explores the social and economic effects of the Dominican Republic’s dependency on the tourism industry, particularly as they relate to male sex workers. The abundance of opportunity in the tourism industry—as opposed to the lack thereof in, per se, agriculture—all but forces migration of the middle class and the poor to urban areas, where they can easily access popular tourist destinations,…

Film Analysis: Dólares de Arena The film by filmmakers Israel Cardenas and Laura Amelia Guzaman Dólares de Arena was released in 2014 and features Noeli (Yanet Mojica) as the main character. The fairly attractive young Dominican woman, Noeli is improvised. She lives in a hut with her boyfriend Yeremi (Ricardo Ariel Torbio). Her life seems very relaxed as she hangs out with and hustles white tourist on the beaches of the Dominican Republic. Her main conflict is her class and by consequence her…

“I think that when I write, I write out of who I am and the questions I need to figure out” (How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents 169). Everyone has a way to escape reality, some draw, some listen to music, some take a nap, while others merely read and write, such as Julia Alvarez. The self proclaimed Dominican- American explains so in the Bloomsbury Review as her early life has consisted of many hardships that her writing addresses at one point or another throughout her poetry and novels.…

Besides being very innovative and realistic, the text of Machiavelli was since its first publication in contrast with the doctrines promoted by Catholicism. The language in which it was written, the vulgar, made it accessible to a large number of people who were able to spread his innovative ideas. Machiavelli introduced the separation of morality and ethics from politics. He was convinced that religion is an instrumentum regni which hold firm and unite people in the name of a single…

Italy in the year 1620 is a very trying time for individuals who go against the Roman-Catholic doctrine. From the beginning of the first century when Christianity was introduced to the Italian peninsula, it rose to a powerhouse status as a social and religious leviathan (Kirsch). During this time period, the Church had the power to mandate, shape and enforce laws, giving harsh repercussions such as imprisonment or in exceptional cases, death for those who publically spoke against it (Wolfgang).…

A lot of people confuse this with the Church banning the Malleus Maleficarum, though it does not show up in the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (“List of Prohibited Books”), the first being produced in 1559. The Witches Hammer, from my point of view, may have been one of the most influential and, consequently, one of the most infamous or notorious books, of all time. At the height…

adequately defend Catholicism against attacks. In addition, the Bishops in the council acknowledged the Latin Vulgate written by Saint Jerome as the correct version of the Bible (The Council of Trent). This decision, in addition to the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, told the faithful which books to read and which not to read in order to not read heretical or ill-translated books (Schlumpf). Other effects of the council were that many abuses ended and bishops, priests, and nuns were well trained in…

library if a teacher, student, parent, or administrator thinks it is explicit or offensive in any way. Books get banned because of offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to any age group. The Roman Catholic church began the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in 1559 which is a list of all the notorious banned books. Plato was the first to talk about the idea of banning books in 360 B.C., he said that we should get rid of any books that were unsatisfactory. The only way that people have…

Since the dawn of the pen and pencil, literature has existed to communicate the human experience. There are countless numbers of books in the world, all of which drastically vary in content, size and quality. Despite all of the disparate traits between them, this drive to relay another’s view on life is shared among all literature. However, there are many individuals that seek to suppress these views by banning books from libraries and schools. This desire to ban and suppress an author’s…