Prohibited books , Book collecting A society is basically defined by its mores. Works that attack, or merely disregard the mores of any society are likely to be banned or censored. As mores change, of course, so do banned books. What was permissible in the nineteenth century may result in a ban in the twentieth.
Society protects itself and the mores that hold it together.
As mores change, the structure of censorship changes. For example, The Decameron was openly displayed in the seventeenth century, but hidden in a locked cabinet in the Nineteenth. So this type of censorship is very much limited to the society it issues from. Lysistrata by Aristophanes pushes buttons in more than one society. Male dominated societies fear the female dominance it portrays.