Novel and Censorship or Eros' Bad Faith

The modern novel, psychological, sentimental and social by definition, has always sought to deal, directly or indirectly, with sex. The subject having strong psychological implications and being liable to be a butt for censorship, the novelist had to invent sophisticated strategies to keep his good image as an artist and make his works acceptable to a comparatively large public, without losing sight that he might run into serious difficulties with the law. The present essay, a continuation "The Figure of the Author", examines some sexually explicit novels published in the last four hundred years, notably "L'Acadmie des dames", "Fanny Hill", "Tristram Shandy", "Madame Bovary", "Ulysses", "Lady Chatterley's Lover" and "Lolita" It studies their various narrative strategies to deal with this risky subject and the trials instituted against them. It lays stress on the structural link between censorship and poetic innovation where the modern novel is concerned, and on the bad faith involved in its composition, publication, circulation, prohibition and reading.