Censorship

What Dominique Pagani says

Dominique Pagani approaches censorship mainly through Nerval and Angélique. He shows how the Riancey amendment, which bans the serial novel that mixes history and fiction, forces the narrator to prove that the abbé de Bucquoy existed. The book that would provide the proof remains impossible to find, and the narrative becomes an anti-novel1. He links this to the retitling of Les Faux Saulniers under Louis-Napoléon, which conceals the political dimension of the text. He also cites Nerval's memory of Vienna, capital of the Holy Alliance, where the censor is the only one who reads everything12. For him, this anecdote shows the political weight of the theme. The tribute to Jacques D'Hondt takes up the anecdote again: the censor declares his offices the freest place in the Empire. There, censorship is tied to Diderot's Rameau's Nephew and to its legacy in Hegel and Marx. Hegel and Molière appear as knowing how to turn censorship's own game against it, and the "clandestine Hegel" answers the charge of conservatism3. Finally, answering a question from the audience, he mentions how Racine got around censorship1.

1. 1Griaule (Marcel)18 Oct 2017
2. 2L'interview de Dominique Pagani : Introduction aux futurs ateliers23 Mar 2020
3. 3Hommage à Jacques D'Hondt (2)2 Aug 2016

Introduction produced automatically from the 3 sessions on this theme, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the sessions.