Abstract | Keywords | Export | Availability | Bookmark

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

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.

Fiction --- French literature --- Flaubert, Gustave --- Characters and characteristics in literature --- Personnages dans la littérature --- Flaubert, Gustave, --- Characters --- Personnages --- Characters and characteristics in literature. --- Character sketches --- Characterization (Literature) --- Literary characters --- Literary portraits --- Portraits, Literary --- History and criticism --- -Characters --- Personnages dans la littérature --- Characters. --- Flaubert, Gustaw, --- Flober, Gi︠u︡stav, --- Fu-lou-pai, --- Fu, Lou-pai, --- Fu-lou-pai, Chü-ssu-tʻa fu, --- Fuloubai, --- Phlōmper, Gkystav, --- Phlōmper, Goustauos, --- Флобер, Гюстав, --- פלאבער, ג. --- פלאבער, גוסטאוו, --- פלובר, גוסטאב --- 福樓拜, --- Flūbir, Gūstāv, --- Flūbir, Gūstāw, --- فلوبر، گوستاو --- Arts and Humanities --- Literature --- Flaubert, Gustave, - 1821-1880 - Characters --- Flaubert, Gustave, - 1821-1880