Salammbô and Bovary, Argentine novels. Two classics of French literature in popular 20th-century editions.

Abstract

The fortune of 18th and 19th century French literature during the development of the Argentine publishing field (1920-1955) is surprisingly unstable due to strong editorial modifications that annul the canonic treatment usually reserved to books considered "classics". As we shall see in popular editions of Madame Bovary and Salammbô, these modifications either introduce the political and economical context in the novels, or materialize, in the paratext, internal tensions of the text. This perspective broadens, in the line of Donald McKenzie's work, the theoretical scope, as it considers the book (and not only the text) as an indicator of meaning, thus transforming editorial devices into unexpected readers.