{"product_id":"9780801466410","title":"Dirt for Art's Sake: Books on Trial from \"Madame Bovary\" to \"Lolita\"","description":"In \u003cem\u003eDirt for Art's Sake\u003c\/em\u003e, Elisabeth Ladenson recounts the most visible of modern obscenity trials involving scandalous books and their authors. What, she asks, do these often-colorful legal histories have to tell us about the works themselves and about a changing cultural climate that first treated them as filth and later celebrated them as masterpieces?\u003cp\u003eLadenson's narrative starts with \u003cem\u003eMadame Bovary\u003c\/em\u003e (Flaubert was tried in France in 1857) and finishes with \u003cem\u003eFanny Hill \u003c\/em\u003e(written in the eighteenth century, put on trial in the United States in 1966); she considers, along the way, Les Fleurs du Mal, \u003cem\u003eUlysses\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eThe Well of Loneliness\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eLady Chatterley's Lover\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eTropic of Cancer\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eLolita\u003c\/em\u003e, and the works of the Marquis de Sade. Over the course of roughly a century, Ladenson finds, two ideas that had been circulating in the form of avant-garde heresy gradually became accepted as truisms, and eventually as grounds for legal defense. The first is captured in the formula \"art for art's sake\"-the notion that a work of art exists in a realm independent of conventional morality. The second is realism, vilified by its critics as \"dirt for dirt's sake.\" In Ladenson's view, the truth of the matter is closer to -dirt for art's sake-\"the idea that the work of art may legitimately include the representation of all aspects of life, including the unpleasant and the sordid.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLadenson also considers cinematic adaptations of these novels, among them Vincente Minnelli's \u003cem\u003eMadame Bovary\u003c\/em\u003e, Stanley Kubrick's \u003cem\u003eLolita\u003c\/em\u003e and the 1997 remake directed by Adrian Lyne, and various attempts to translate de Sade's works and life into film, which faced similar censorship travails. Written with a keen awareness of ongoing debates about free speech, \u003cem\u003eDirt for Art's Sake\u003c\/em\u003e traces the legal and social acceptance of controversial works with critical acumen and delightful wit.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Cornell University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47068459794672,"sku":"9780801466410","price":14.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780801466410_p0.jpg?v=1763667449","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780801466410","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}