Vasilii M. Tolmatchoff, DSc in Philology, Professor, Head of the Department of History of the Foreign Literature, Faculty of Philology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, 1st building of humanitarian faculties, Lomonosov Moscow State University, GSP-1, Leninskie Gory, 119991, Moscow, Russia. E-mail: tolmatchoff@hotmail.com
The paper written in polemics with the truisms of the Soviet literary criticism (identification of Flaubert with his narrator in "Madame Bovary", Flaubert’s critical realism etc.) analyses in full detail a figure of the narrator in this novel, his methods of self-presentation, motives of narration, narrative metamorphoses. A particular attention is given to analysis of the narrator’s “we”, “nous”, “madness” and to the related images of “lie”, “mask”, negative search for Absolute, the embodiment and symbol of which in the novel is death, non-being. In context of lie, the characters of the novel, including Homais, are not opposed to each other but are the continuation of the narrator’s projections as well as of Flaubert’s personal views on writing. The paper actualises intertextuality of the novel corresponded with images of Saint Anthony, Don Quixote, King Lear, Hamlet and also of quest, fulfilled in a tradition of some apothetical mysticism or gnosticism.
Flaubert; Madame Bovary; narrator; personality of narrator; narrator’s point of view; outlook; narrator’s personal non-identity; principles of narration; deception; madness; intertextuality.
04.06.2021
21.06.2021
Tolmatchoff, V.M. “On the Narrator in Madame Bovary”. Literaturovedcheskii zhurnal, no. 3(53), 2021, pp. 49–71. (In Russ.) DOI: 10.31249/litzhur/2021.53.03
1. Griftsov, B.A. Psikhologiya pisatelya [The Psychology of a Writer]. Moscow, Khudozhestvennaya literature Publ., 1988, 462 p. (In Russ.)
2. Zhenett, Zh. “Momenty bezmolviya u Flobera” [“Moments of Silence in Flober”].
Zhenett, Zherar. Figury [Figers] : in 2 vols, transl. from French; ed. by S.N. Zenkin.
Moscow, imeni Sabashnikovykh Publ., 1998. (In Russ.)
3. Zolya, Eh. Sobraniye sochinenii [Collected Works] : in 26 vols, transl. from French.
Moscow, Khudozhestvennaya literatura Publ., 1966, vol. 25, 768 p. (In Russ.)
4. Karel’skii, A.V. Metamorfosy Orfeya: Besedy po istorii zapadykh literatur [Metamorphoses of Orpheus: Talks on the History of Western Literature] Issue 1: Frantsuzskaya literatura 19 veka [French Literature of the 19th Century], comp. by
O. Vainshtein. Moscow, RGGU Publ., 1998, 279 p. (In Russ.)
5. Mopassan, Gi de. Polnoe sobranie sochinenii [Complete Works] : in 13 vols, transl.
from French. Moscow, Khudozhestvennaya literatura Publ., 1950.
6. Reizov B.G. Frantsuzskii roman XIX veka [The French Novel of the 19th Century].
Moscow, Vysshaya shkola Publ., 1977, 304 p. (In Russ.)
7. Starobinskii, Zh. “Shkala temperatur: Yazyk tela v ‘Gospozhe Bovari’” [“Temperature Scale: Language of the Body in ‘Madame Bovari’”]. Starobinskii, Zh.
Poehziya i znanie [Poetry and Knowledge] : in 2 vols, trans. from French and
comp. by S.N. Zenkin. Moscow, Yazyki slavyanskoi kul’tury Publ., 2002, vol. 1,
pp. 432–463. (In Russ.)
8. Flober, G. “Gospozha Bovari” [“Madame Bovari”]. Flober G. Sobranie sochinenii
[Collected Works] : in 3 vols, Moscow, Khudozhestvennaya literatura Publ., 1983,
vol. 1, pp. 29–332. (In Russ.)
9. Flober, G. O literature, iskusstve, pisatel’skom trude: pis’ma, stat’i [About Literature, Art, Literary Work: Letters, Articles] : in 2 vols, transl. from French; comp. by
S. Leibovich. Moscow, Khudozhestvennaya literatura Publ., 1984. (In Russ.)
10. Shefer, Zh.-M. Chto takoe literaturnyi zhanr? [What is a literary genre?], transl.
from French. Мoscow, Editorial URSS Publ., 2010, 192 p. (In Russ.)
11. Bloom, Harold. Genius. N.Y., Warner Books, 2002, pp. 659–660.
12. Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary: Mœurs de province / éd. Thierry Laget. P.,
Gallimard, 2001, pp. 48–446. (In French)
13. James, Henry. “Gustave Flaubert” [1902]. James, Henry. Literary Criticism: French
Writers. Other European Writers. The Prefaces to the New York Edition. N.Y., The
Library of America, 1984, pp. 314–346.