Flaubert's Tentation : remapping nineteenth-century French histories of religion and science / Mary Orr.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Orr, Mary, 1960-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Flaubert, Gustave, 1821-1880. Tentation de saint Antoine.

Flaubert, Gustave.

Physical Description:

xi, 352 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2008.

Summary:

This is the first comprehensive study in English of Flaubert's least well-known masterpiece, the final version of the Tentation de saint Antoie (1874) If thanks to Michael Foucault calling it a 'fantastic library' it has the reputation of arcane erudition, its various manuscript versions putting complex creative writing processes on display have made it also the paradigm work for the specialist genetic critic. Both reputations distance the ordinary reader from the text which Flaubert himself described as 'l'oeuvre de toute ma vie'. By assuming instead no prior knowledge of the work, its versions, debates, or contexts, Mary Orr opens up new readings of the seven tableaux which comprise it, and new ways of interpreting the whole. Newcomers and specialists are therefore invited to contemplate afresh this central work in Flaubert's aeuvre and in nineteenth-century French studies.

Arguing that Flaubert was imagining his own epoch through the eyes of a visionary saint in the third to fourth century AD, Orr elucidates for the first time the dialogues between religion and science that constitute the dynamic of the text. By insisting on the work's meticulous accuracy and imaginative representation of science encapsulated by the 'remapping' analogy of her subtitle, Orr proposes that Flaubert's Tentation is a paradigm of nineteenth-century French and also European 'literary science'.

For specialists in nineteenth-century French literature and in Flaubert studies, this book challenges received critical wisdom on a number of fronts. Flaubert's 'realism', 'anti-clericalism', and 'orientalism' are all remapped through the text's unlikely protagonist-visionary speaking to the religious and scientific controversies of nineteenth-century France. Flaubert's 1874 Tentation is then indeed his 'temptation' to write the life of his times.

Contents:

Modern critical legacies 7

Remapping literary-critical and generic dialogues 10

Remapping forms and knowledge 18

Part I Thinking Religion(s) 25

The Egypt of St Anthony 26

Religion in the France of Flaubert 34

The Egypt of nineteenth-century France 46

1 Description of Egypt 52

Geographies 53

Hagiographies 57

Semiologies 67

2 Principalities and Powers 75

Turning the tables: 'Nebuchadnezzar's' feast 76

Gifts and knowledge: the 'Queen of Sheba' 85

3 The Master Disciple 95

De-lionizing the Vita 97

Imitations of the Life of Christ 103

4 Statements of Faith(s) 115

The universal 'Church' 119

Angles on vision 129

Remapping the holy in the land of new religions 135

Part II Sciences Of The Gods: Gods Of The Sciences 139

The Alexandrian schools 143

The Museum National 148

Ancients, antiquities, and archaeologies of knowledge 153

5 A Comedie (sur)humaine 159

Remodelling Nature's gods 161

Hilarion's Egyptian doubles 177

Matters of life and death: new generations in geological time 185

6 The Devil in the Detail 189

Transports of the imagination 192

Selective in finities 197

Transforming the demons: rethinking the genesis of Flaubert's Tentation 202

7 Bones of Contention 207

Family resemblances 209

Marvellous and (m)any-headed monsters 215

Revelations or analogues in dialogue 226

Unities of composition 240

Literary transformisms 246

Remapping nineteenth-century French literary-critical terrains 249

Appendix 1 History of the Early Christian Church; Egypt as Part of the Roman Empire 300

Appendix 2 History of Nineteenth-Century France: State and Religion 302

Appendix 3 History of Napoleon's Egyptian Campaign, 1798-1901 305

Appendix 4 Key Dates for Franco-Egyptian Relatios, 1802-1876 308

Appendix 5 History of Nineteenth-Century French Sciences and Scientific Institutes 311.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [314]-336) and index.

ISBN:

9780199258581

0199258589

OCLC:

231947073