BBC Radio’s In Our Time is a pretty erudite podcast, lots of university dons sitting around talking. On the subway this morning, I was listening to The Trial of Madame Bovary, in which Flaubert’s novel was prosecuted by the French government for promoting immorality:
In January 1857 a man called Ernest Pinard stood up in a crowded courtroom and declared, “Art that observes no rule is no longer art; it is like a woman who disrobes completely. To impose the one rule of public decency on art is not to subjugate it but to honour itâ€. Pinard was no grumbling hack, he was the imperial prosecutor of France, and facing him across the courtroom was the writer Gustave Flaubert. Flaubert’s work had been declared “an affront to decent comportment and religious moralityâ€. It was a novel called Madame Bovary.
Gallery Carre
