Introduction to Flaubert

[Edit this paragraph] Introduction by Flaubert

Full name: gustave flaubert gustave flaubert.

Date of birth: 182 1- 1880.

An important French critical realist writer

Gustave flaubert, an important French critical realist writer in the middle of1821217, was born in Rouen to a famous family of surgeons. His works reflect the era of France in the period of 1848- 187 1 and expose the ugly and vulgar bourgeois society. His "objective indifference" creative theory and fine artistic style are unique in the history of French literature. Mo Bosang, a famous short story writer, once worshipped him as a teacher, and Flaubert was Mo Bosang's mentor all his life. Their writing styles were similar.

Life creation

When I was young, I studied law in Paris and dropped out of school because of illness. After his father died, he and his widowed mother lived in Croix, a suburb of Rouen. He lived on a rich legacy and devoted himself to literary creation. He often travels around, consciously inspects the society and understands rural life. He lived in the period of the rise and development of French capitalism, but he had a clear understanding of the prosperity of capitalism.

From 65438 to 0852, Flaubert spent more than four years writing the novel Madame Bovary. The novel reproduces the life in other provinces of France in the middle of19th century with concise and delicate brushstrokes. Emma, the heroine, spent her youth in a monastery and was influenced by romanticism. As an adult, I married Bovary, a mediocre town doctor. Disappointed, he was confused by the dude Rudolph and became his mistress. But Rudolph just took part in the act, and soon got tired of her and left. Emma became Ryan's mistress again. In order to satisfy her selfish desires, Emma borrowed usury, which led to bankruptcy and finally committed suicide by taking poison. As soon as the novel came out, it caused a sensation in the literary world. Flaubert gained a high reputation, but he was accused by the authorities of slandering religion, which was indecent. This incident gave him great pressure, so his creation turned to ancient themes. Five years later, Flaubert published his second novel, Fort Salang, which described the mercenaries and the people's uprising in Carthage in BC. The author reproduces the broad scene of fierce social struggle at that time with realistic brushstrokes.

187 1 did not have a great influence on Flaubert's creation. He devoted himself to revising the old draft The Temptation of San Anton. The novel tells the story of a saint in medieval Egypt who overcame the temptation of the devil, and expresses the author's extreme aversion to social greed. From 1875 to 1876, there was a literary controversy between Flaubert and george sand. George Thornton accused him of being too objective and lacking in emotion, which prompted Flaubert to write three stories. All three stories have their own unique styles and themes. The Legend of Shengyu Company is adapted from religious legends. Herodias described the internal strife of Christianity in the Middle East. A Simple Heart is one of the most outstanding short stories. It describes the ordinary and touching life of a maid. Through the details of daily life, the author created a simple and moving image of a working woman, showing her beautiful and kind heart and brave and witty qualities. Gorky praised this short story as a "hidden magical power".

Flaubert's last novel Buffa and Bai Juyi is missing a chapter, which can be said to be the companion of emotional education. This paper mainly describes the repercussions of the 1848 revolution in other French provinces. Bufa and Bai Juxie are two scribes. After Bai Juyi got a huge inheritance, he settled in the countryside with his best friend Bufa. They study agriculture, chemistry, geology, history and literature, and then abandon them one by one. News of the revolution reached the countryside on February 1848. They turned to study philosophy, theology, pedagogy and law, but in the end they found nothing and returned to their old jobs.

achievements of art

Flaubert thinks that art should reflect real life and dare to expose ugly phenomena. He is an outstanding master of realism who accurately reproduces social reality. However, he advocated that literature should describe things strictly, meticulously and faithfully, and literature can describe ugly life phenomena truthfully, which opened the way for naturalism in the late19th century.

His artistic achievements are mainly manifested in modeling. He is good at creating a series of typical characters with outstanding personalities in short stories. Because of this, he pays great attention to observing things, collecting materials and paying attention to the truth of details. While portraying typical characters, he pays attention to the description of the environment. He often makes extensive investigations and field trips. In description, he usually uses line drawing to grasp the characteristics and set off the atmosphere with concise language. He particularly emphasized the important role of language. In order to temper language and sentences, they are often scrutinized repeatedly. He believes that "there is no good idea without good form, and vice versa". Therefore, his words are concise, clear and accurate. He is a literary and spiritual mentor of Mo Bosang, and is also recognized as a master of language art by colleagues in many countries in the world.

Flaubert's masterpiece

Flaubert's masterpiece is Madame Bovary, and Madame Bovary is the masterpiece of the famous French writer Flaubert. Through the experience of Emma, a passionate woman, the author reproduces the social life of France in the middle of the19th century. The artistic form of Madame Bovary makes it a new turning point in modern novels. Since the publication of Madame Bovary, novelists know that even novels should be carefully crafted. This is not only a model novel, but also a model essay. However, Madame Bovary also brought trouble to the author. Many people sat down and criticized Flaubert's book "Destroying social morality and religion". He was also circulated by the court: it turned out that he was accused of "indecency". At this time, many readers expressed sympathy and support for Flaubert, and even the romantic writers who had always opposed him defended him. In court, after a heated debate, the writer was acquitted-this shows the influence of Madame Bovary.

Artistic contribution

Milan Kundera has a famous saying to the effect that it was not until Flaubert appeared that novels finally caught up with poetry. As we all know, European novels originated from long narrative poems. In other words, the part describing the events in narrative poems has been stripped off and gradually become a special storytelling genre. The birth of the novel makes poetry lose its natural right of "narration" and engage in lyricism more. However, compared with the ancient art of poetry, there is no doubt that this novel is naive. It is not surprising that it has been neglected and discriminated against for a long time. In my opinion, the immaturity of the novel lies not only in the fact that it has not been fully developed as a special art, but more importantly, its relationship with poetry is very ambiguous, and it has not yet got rid of its dependence on the matrix of poetry. Its own special and strict stylistic rules have not been formed for a long time. The story of early novels has been greatly enhanced, but poetry can also tell stories, which used to be very good. So what's the difference between a novel and a narrative poem? Even the evaluation standard of novel art is borrowing poetry. One of the most obvious examples is that up to today, the most commonly used vocabulary for evaluating a great novel is still "this great epic". The style of "epic" is still the highest standard for judging novels. This is like saying that if you make achievements in the garden of novels, you have to go to the country of poetry to receive rewards.

About Madame Bovary

The appearance of Flaubert is of epoch-making significance. Madame Bovary is regarded as "the code of new art", "the most perfect novel" and "has had revolutionary consequences in the literary world". Baudelaire, Saint Uncle, Zola and others all spoke highly of this work. As a result of the publication of this novel, Flaubert became a novel master comparable to Balzac and Stendhal, and was recognized as an outstanding stylist. Flaubert's great reputation is largely due to the impeccable stylistic achievements of Madame Bovary. By the beginning of this century, Flaubert's influence was increasing day by day, and modernist novelists also regarded him as the ancestor and model, especially the French "new novels" after the 1950s, which even praised Flaubert. They think it was Flaubert who kept novels abreast of poetry. Alain Robbe-Grillet, an important representative of the new novel, regarded Flaubert as a true mentor and enlightener in narrative art, even regarded Flaubert as the opposite of Balzac, and thoroughly criticized and liquidated Balzac's "outdated" writing style. Then, what extraordinary achievements has Madame Bovary made in style and narrative, and what role has it played in the development of the novel?

The first outline of the first volume of Madame Bovary tells the story in the first person. The third person from the second summary to the end of the work. In the first line of this work, a sentence appeared: "We were studying by ourselves when the headmaster came in, followed by a freshman without a uniform and a janitor with a big desk."

Here, the word "we" is not casually written, and its meaning is extraordinary. You might as well recall how Balzac's novels usually begin. For example, "Louis Lamber was born in Monval, a small town in Vendai province, on 1797, where his father ran a humble tannery" (Balzac's Louis Lamber Yu). Someone once asked this question at the beginning: Who is telling this story? Is it the author? Why is the author's tone so unquestionable? Why does he know everything? Of course, not every novel reader will ask such a question, but this firm, clear and omniscient tone shows that the author is above the story and readers, which is beyond doubt. Moreover, this tone has not completely got rid of the narrative form of oral stories. If someone asks Madame Bovary the same question: Who is telling the story of Madame Bovary? The answer is "we"; How did the narrator know? The answer is "we saw it"; When the narrator "sees", so does the reader. The time when the story unfolds is synchronized with the time when the reader reads it (in Balzac's case, the story has already happened), so the author takes the reader to the scene of the event at once. Compared with Balzac, the story here is obviously more realistic. From today's point of view, similar first-person narration is not a great thing, but at that time, this small step taken by Flaubert was of unusual significance. And I think Flaubert's contribution to style is certainly not just a personal change. Behind this change, a completely different narrative style from Hugo, Stendhal and Balzac was established. In Flaubert's works, the previous omniscient narrative perspective is strictly limited: the author no longer stands on the omniscient position and imitates the tone of God; Will not "appear" from the narrative at any time, comment on the characters and themes of the works, and provide meaning; No longer have the privilege to impose their own ideas and tendencies on readers.

Flaubert is one of the earliest writers in the history of European literature who asked the author to quit the novel and began to successfully realize this creed in practice. He asked the narrative to exclude all subjective lyricism, exclude the author's voice, and let the facts show themselves. He believes that if readers vaguely feel and guess, the author's intentions and tendencies are not allowed; Every paragraph and sentence of a literary work should have no trace of the author's thoughts. As his student Mo Bosang said, Flaubert always "hides himself deeply in his works, carefully covers the lines in his hands like a puppet actor, and tries not to let the audience notice his voice". Flaubert also wrote in his letter to george sand: "When it comes to my artistic ideal, I don't think I should expose myself. An artist should not appear in his works any more than God should appear in nature. " Brunnert, a French scholar, has keenly pointed out that "Madame Bovary has epoch-making significance in the history of French novels, which indicates the end of something and the beginning of something." From the narrative theories of roland barthes and Derrida, we can clearly hear Flaubert's voice. If the history of the stylistic change of European novels can be regarded as the history of the gradual disappearance of the author's voice from his works described by Booth, then Flaubert is undoubtedly a key figure that cannot be ignored.

Perhaps some students will put forward the view that since the novel is fiction, there has long been a tacit understanding between the author and the reader, that is, the reader accepted the fiction in advance before reading the novel, so it doesn't matter how the author tells the story (objectively or subjectively). What matters is whether the work can impress the readers. What's more, the author deliberately hides himself in his works and does not completely give up the "guidance" to readers. Giving up one rhetoric will inevitably mean the establishment of another rhetoric. After all, "objectification" can only be a rhetorical device. I think this view is very interesting and reasonable. Frankly speaking, I also understand the significance of Flaubert's style change from the perspective of rhetoric. In fact, Flaubert hides himself in the narrative to better "reveal"; The purpose of limiting narrative perspective is to make narrative gain more freedom.

In the narrative of omniscient perspective, the communication between the author and the reader is open (in ancient storytelling occasions, the audience can even ask questions or discuss directly with the narrator): the author tells and the reader reads. But Flaubert is not satisfied with this open communication, because the effect of communication is limited. He prefers a secret communication, that is to say, the author does not tell the reader his own views and tendencies, but lets the reader draw his own conclusions through reading, so that the communication field between the reader and the author suddenly expands.

Flaubert's objective narration did not completely give up his right to "guide" readers. Because judging from the work Madame Bovary, we can still feel the author's own inclination, position and intention in reading. In addition, I don't agree with the statement of "pure objectivity". Because this concept makes a mess of some already clear facts. Besides, Madame Bovary is not a "purely objective" work, which is essentially different from the so-called "materialized novel" and "purely objective narrative" of the later "new novel" such as Rob Ge Ye (I'm not saying that Rob Ge Ye's work is useless, at least his "jealousy" is good), but Rob Ge Ye can't leave Flaubert's rhetoric without language and writing. Language and writing are the products of "culture", which is neither "pure" nor "material". How to achieve "pure objectivity"? If it's not a myth, what is it? Later, Rob Geyer simply stopped writing novels (it is said that he has recently returned to his old job) and went to make movies because he felt that the camera was closer to his "materialization" requirements. In my opinion, this is still unreasonable. A camera is a thing, but the person who controls it is also a product of "culture". He or she has his or her own special values and emotional happiness, hatred, sadness and joy. How does he (she) achieve "pure objectivity"?

As far as Madame Bovary is concerned, Flaubert's transformation has not abandoned the traditional narrative resources, nor destroyed the harmony and perfection of the work style. The most important thing is that the narrative has an appropriate limit. As we said before, it is impossible for a writer like lev tolstoy to imitate easily. His great talent is a miracle in itself (Zweig said that he is greater than a great man), and Flaubert's body is more like a craftsman. There is no doubt that he is an outstanding craftsman. Madame Bovary is an elaborate masterpiece, which has become a symbol of perfection since its publication. Flaubert is very sensitive to language and style, and his creative attitude is even more conscientious and meticulous. In Madame Bovary, the author does not deal with any details and clues at will, and strives for perfection. The rhythm of narrative, the measure of language, the arrangement of speed and strength are all just right. The order in which each character appears in the work, the proportion in the story, and the relationship between the main character and the secondary character all conform to a specific proportion. For example, Emma met Lyon for the first time, but when the relationship between Emma and Lyon heated up sharply, the author sent him to Paris. The huge emotional vacancy left by Leon made her jump into Rudolph's arms like a moth. When Emma and Rudolph calmed down, Leon came back from Paris. This arrangement not only makes the plot develop reasonably, but also makes the narrative ups and downs, avoiding the common problem of straightforward narration. For another example, the viscount and the blind are symbolic figures in their works. Although it is not written much, it has a specific meaning every time it appears, which seems to indicate some subtle changes in the course of the story. Emma's "slip" (she and Rudolph fell into the river of desire) is very important in the story of the novel, but the location chosen by the author is neither Rudolph's hut nor the Woods and gardens they walked through, but arranged in the conference hall of an agricultural exhibition. At the same time, Rudolph's verbal attacks on Emma are often interrupted by the chairman's speech. False love vows and confessions are completely juxtaposed with words such as bulls, seeds, medals and cesspits, and the author does not give any explanation. The whole flirting process looks funny and absurd, but there is pent-up desire everywhere between the lines. The tension formed by the display of different types of discourse makes this scene unforgettable. In fact, this is also the most wonderful chapter about flirting that I have ever read.

About language

Flaubert once described it in the novel: We beat the broken iron pot of language and tried to touch the stars in the sky with it, only to make the bear dance. It seems that Flaubert has a special sensitivity to language and a very clear understanding of the great difficulties in expressing the meaning of language. From this, we can understand why Flaubert regards the accuracy of language as the only mission expressed by the author; It is also understandable why the author's discrimination and choice of words have reached the point of being possessed. Some people regard Madame Bovary as the best textbook for studying writers, and this evaluation is not excessive.

Flaubert's works

Madame Bovary, Fort Salem, Emotional Education, The Temptation of Saint Anton, The Biography of Saint Yu Lian, A Simple Heart, Buffa and Bai Juyi.