How an obscene work becomes a classic
Looking back on the Madame Bovary trial, and the banning of Lolita, Ulysses, and Lady Chatterley’s Lover, it’s easy to feel superior to the philistines who didn’t recognize these literary works as high art. (Flaubert disséquant Madame Bovary caricature, at right, found here.) But Elizabeth Ladenson argues in Dirt for Art’s Sake that each age, including ours, is censorious in . . .