Melanie Möller

Literature must be free, wild, can be angry and must also be able to hurt, otherwise it loses its appeal, says Melanie Möller. It must remain a free space for unguarded thoughts and sharp words. To this end, the author delivers a wild ride through several centuries of literary history in the fight for the freedom of the word.
Banning the Bible from schools in Utah, banning classics from curricula and textbooks, smoothing out translations, censoring classics, politically correct guidelines for literature, sensitivity reading, trigger warnings, banning ‘difficult’ vocabulary: “A disaster!” says Melanie Möller, warning against underestimating the reader. When it comes to art, there can be no compromises. If you water it down, you disempower the reader – and the reader is smarter than you think.

Melanie Möller is Professor of Latin Studies at the Free University of Berlin. She writes regularly for various daily newspapers and has written monographs on Cicero, Ovid, Homer and rhetoric, among others.