This book examines the genetic processes that shaped two of the great literary masterpieces of modernity: Flaubert's (L'educationsentimentale ) and Proust's (A la recherche du temps perdu.
The second volume of Flaubert's correspondence details his travels, his relationships with Princess Mathilde Bonaparte and George Sand, the political climate, and his works, L'Educationsentimentale,
This is the first book-length study of Flaubert's use of dialogue, an important but neglected component of his fictional texts. Professor Haig's starting point is Sartre's observation that 'Flaubert does not believe that we speak: we are spoken'. Dialogue in Flaubert does not attempt to represent an individual style but to circumscribe a larger phenomenon of language. Speech defines man both in the sense that it describes him as a set of human characteristics, and inscribes him within a system of social values. The author explores the development of Flaubert's use of dialogue in Madame Bovary, L'EducationSentimentale (both versions), and Bouvard et Pécuchet.
Originally published in 1984, this book argues that there is an inherited suspicion from the nineteenth-century that the historical novel after Scott is essentially a 'costume' affair, a dashing tale of times of old, suited only to minor talents and undiscerning readers. Though Scott inaugurated the period of the novel's greatest accomplishments, the specific tradition he founded seems to peter out into relative sterility. This book challenges such a view, and in doing so, offers a major reappraisal of the mainstream Victorian novel. Peter Smith argues that Scott's abiding concern was with the nature of historical change, not in remote but in modern times, and that a similar concern is equally fundamental to Dickens, Flaubert, Henry James and Conrad. In a series of readings of Little Dorrit, L'educationsentimentale, Bouvard et Pecuchet, The Princess Casamassima, The Ambassadors and Nostromo, he offers a fresh interpretation not only of these works but of their authors' careers as a wh
The second volume of Flaubert's correspondence details his travels, his relationships with Princess Mathilde Bonaparte and George Sand, the political climate, and his works, L'Educationsentimentale,