I have currently been reading the above-mentioned book and found a passage I find interesting:
> The soot-coated packet of pictures which he had hidden in the flue of the fireplace and in the presence of whose shameless or bashful wantonness he lay for hours sinning in thought and deed;
My translation: "He spent hours looking at and jacking off to sexy pictures."
I find this interesting as the quoted passage comes across less vulgar but states the same thing in my mind. Is this what makes something literary? Do you have any examples of such a thing that jump out to you?
TheChocolateMelted t1_j9b8o7y wrote
The standards for vulgarity were quite a lot more restrictive 100 years ago than they are nowadays. Being blunt worked against writers. It's worth noting that readers were actually warned about the presence of bodily fluids/functions in this novel. Vague memory that the rejection of religion was a groundbreaking subject, but don't quote me.
​
The concept that comes to mind is a touch removed from your Joyce one. It's actually from Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie. The narrator describes censorship laws banning anything as explicit from kissing in Indian cinema at the time of the story. But then a filmmaker circumvented this by having two lovers kiss an apple and pass it back and forward between each other. Just a beautiful image. It's been popping up every so often for twenty years.