Flaubert's characters : the language of illusion
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Flaubert's characters : the language of illusion
（Cambridge studies in French）
Cambridge University Press, 1985
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Note
Bibliography: p. 119-122
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
This major new study takes issue both with the traditional critical view that Flaubert's central characters are weak and with the approach adopted by a number of contemporary critics who claim that character is deliberately undermined in the interests of non-representational writing. Rather, Dr Knight explores the relationship between the contents of Flaubert's stories and his practice as a writer, thereby reinstating the functional value of character in his work. She shows that essential aspects of Flaubert's aesthetic - the opaqueness of language, stupidity, fascination and reverie as the object of art - depend on the psychological make-up of fictional characters: their pathological relationship to language and reality mirrors Flaubert's conception of the readers' stupefied response to his own stylistic effects and to his wilfully naive stories. Flaubert emerges as a representational writer, but one who is supremely self-conscious of the fictional status of his representations.
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Character and value
- 1. Oriental aesthetics
- 2. The merits of inarticulacy
- 3. By-passing speech
- 4. Endless illusions
- 5. Overturning reality
- Conclusion: Making madness more mad
- Notes
- References
- Index.
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