Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • 11 - Flaubert and the visual

  • Edited by Timothy Unwin, University of Bristol
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Companion to Flaubert
    Published online:
    28 May 2006
    Print publication:
    18 November 2004, pp 180-195

  • Summary

    The sheer density of visual information and the pressure placed on the reader to be an observer, to behold the real, make Flaubert's work a model for pictorial representation in fiction. Flaubert is not unique in the history of the nineteenth-century novel for his valuation of the visual. But in his work the visual asserts itself as the single most reliable carrier of signification. The work rests on the power of the visual to sway us or to convince us of the accuracy, realism and truth-telling merit of its representations. Whether or not it ultimately delivers on the meaning it promises, the visual in Flaubert offers nonetheless an open invitation to interpretation and discussion. The centrality of the visual is as true in the realistic novels like Madame Bovary and L'Education sentimentale as it is in the romantic works like La Tentation de saint Antoine and Salammbô. Both styles are marked by a high degree of visuality and both exemplify the dominance of the visual in nineteenth-century literature and culture.