Droit et Cultures (Jun 2009)
« Quand on écrit, faut-il tout écrire ? ». Diderot et la censure
Abstract
Diderot’s attitude regarding the various aspects of censorship and prohibitions is ambivalent. On the one hand, he acknowledges its moral, intellectual and aesthetic significance. But, on the other hand, he argues against it while playing with it in his novel Jacques le fataliste. In a long sequence of “obscene tales” and apology of obscenity cut off from the first edition of his novel, he shows a powerful comical temperament which sends the reader back to the carnivalesque tradition of the bas corporel from Rabelais to Sterne. It nourishes his creation of a new image of intellectual activity he has created which proclaims the dethroning of the thought.
