Confronting the Frugal Editors: The Revue de Paris' Madame Bovary

Abstract

In “Confronting the Frugal Editors,” I argue that the Revue de Paris ' 1856 editorial censorship of Madame Bovary complicates understandings of the identities and boundaries of author and editor; writing, editing and censorship; and, finally, of repressive and productive censorship in nineteenth-century France. Drawing on legal and literary history, on the history of the book, as well as on archival research of Flaubert's original handwritten manuscripts, I examine how Flaubert's editors were not “censors” in a strict and limiting sense. As “editorial censors,” they unwittingly enabled Flaubert — who engaged in the specific practice of writing by suppression — to refine and rewrite crucial passages in the novel. As such, the editorial censorship of Madame Bovary neither silenced nor censored the author. It opened up a space for Flaubert to (re)view and (re)write his manuscript from the otherwise alienating demands of professional editors and of literary censorship laws of the time. Law, Culture and the Humanities 2007; 3: 266—292