Dirt for Art's Sake

Elisabeth Ladenson

Description

In Dirt for Art's Sake, Elisabeth Ladenson recounts the most visible of modern obscenity trials involving scandalous books and their authors. What, she asks, do these often-colorful legal histories have to tell us about the works themselves and about a changing cultural climate that first treated them as filth and later celebrated them as masterpieces? Ladenson's narrative starts with Madame Bovary (Flaubert was tried in France in 1857) and finishes with Fanny Hill (written in the eighteenth century, put on trial in the United States in 1966); she considers, along the way, Les Fleurs du Mal, Ulysses, The Well of Loneliness, Lady Chatterley's Lover, Tropic of Cancer, Lolita, and the works of the Marquis de Sade.Over the course of roughly a century, Ladenson finds, two ideas that had been circulating in the form of avant-garde heresy gradually became accepted as truisms, and eventually as grounds for legal defense. The first is captured in the formula ?art for art's sake??the notion that a work of art exists in a realm independent of conventional morality. The second is realism, vilified by its critics as ?dirt for dirt's sake.? In Ladenson's view, the truth of the matter is closer to ?dirt for art's sake??the idea that the work of art may legitimately include the representation of all aspects of life, including the unpleasant and the sordid. Ladenson also considers cinematic adaptations of these novels, among them Vincente Minnelli's Madame Bovary, Stanley Kubrick's Lolita and the 1997 remake directed by Adrian Lyne, and various attempts to translate de Sade's works and life into film, which faced similar censorship travails. Written with a keen awareness of ongoing debates about free speech, Dirt for Art's Sake traces the legal and social acceptance of controversial works with critical acumen and delightful wit.

Sujets

• Legal history

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 15 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780801460371
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Dirt for Art’s Sake

Also by Elisabeth Ladenson

Proust’s Lesbianism

Dirt for Art’s Sake

B o o k s o n Tr i a l f r o m Madame BovarytoLolita



e l i s a b e t h l a d e n s o n

C o r n e l l U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s Ithaca & London

Copyright © 2007 by Cornell University

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the pub- lisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.

First published 2007 by Cornell University Press

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ladenson, Elisabeth. Dirt for art’s sake : books on trial from Madame Bovary to Lolita / Elisabeth Ladenson. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8014-4168-4 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8014-4168-4 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. French literature—19th century—Censorship. 2. English fiction —20th century—Censorship. 3. American fiction—20th century. —Censorship. 4. Trials (Obscenity)—France—History—19th century. 5. Trials (Obscenity)—Great Britain—History—20th century 6. Trials (Obscenity)—United States—History—20th century. I. Title. PQ295.C47L33 2007 840.9'007—dc22

2006023313

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Cloth printing

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

In loving memory of my parents

I r e n e A k h i m o f f L a d e n s o n January 22, 1931–January 15, 2005

S a m L a d e n s o n April 5, 1927–March 2, 2004 

L’art sans règle n’est plus l’art; c’est comme une femme qui quitterait tout vêtement.

—Ernest Pinard

Oh! it is absurd to have a hard-and-fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn’t. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn’t read.

—Oscar Wilde,The Importance of Being Earnest, Act I

I have never felt inclined to condemn people who look for dirt in literature: looking for dirt, they may find something else.

—Anthony Burgess,ReJoyce

 Contents

Preface: Red Hot Chili Peppers

Acknowledgments

xxiii

Prologue: History Repeats Itself

xi

1

chapter oneGustave Flaubert: Emma Bovary Goes to Hollywood

chapter twoCharles Baudelaire: Florist of Evil

chapter three

47

James Joyce: Leopold Bloom’s Trip to the Outhouse

chapter four

Radclyffe Hall: The Well of Prussic Acid

chapter fiveD. H. Lawrence: Sexual Intercourse Begins

chapter sixHenry Miller: A Gob of Spit in the Face of Art

chapter seven

Vladimir Nabokov: Lolitigation

Epilogue: The Return of the Repressed

Notes

237

Bibliography

Index

ix

257

263

221

107

187

131

17

157

78