So big fight in the virtual teacher lounge over this today.
New edition of 'Huckleberry Finn' without the 'n' word: Read an excerpt from the introduction | Shelf Life | EW.com
What I am interested in is the notion of editing an author and intention. here are my questions:
Obviously words in one era gain new meanings in the next era. We often cannot feel the same emotion of a word as the original readers. i am not saying using "slave" is a better choice, but if there was a word that we use today that came closer to how the n-word it was used at the time would it be wrong to edit that word in?
Is editing the text more harmful than a teacher orally misinterpreting the text to their students? For example, what if the teacher makes the students write an essay on how Huck may be an alien?
How close is editing to translating? We are ok with translating texts continuously; Bible, Dante Plato...
When a teacher asks, "tell me what Hamlet was saying there" is that not the same as editing?