Ernest Pinard, critique littéraire

This paper deals with ­Pinard’s political and literary posterity which, after 1912, elaborated the figure of ­Flaubert’s censor as a canny reader, eventually perceived as a Modern for having emphasized the ­novel’s subversive force. In a demonstration of a less familiar side of censorship history, the paper will also look at the 1882 Duverdy affair, in which Zola was accused of defamation of character during the serial publication of Pot-Bouille.