Art Against Censorship

Art against censorship traces the centrality of literary and theatrical satire to the artistic and political expression of the artist Honoré Daumier. Daumier drew on seventeenth-century theatre and literature in moments of stifling censorship, foregrounding the subversive potential of a newly glorified literary past. -- .

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Honoré Daumier (1808–79), who was imprisoned early on for a politically offensive cartoon, painted scenes from seventeenth-century theatre and literature at moments of stifling censorship later in his career. He continued to find form for dangerous political dissent in the face of intense and shifting censorship laws by drawing on La Fontaine, Molière, and Cervantes, masters of dissimulation and critique in a newly glorified literary past. This book reveals new connections between legal repression and subversive fine-arts practice, showing the force of Daumier’s role in the broader stories of image-text relationships and political expression. -- .