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Book synopsis

This major new study takes issue both with the traditional critical view that Flaubert's central characters are weak and with the approach adopted by a number of contemporary critics who claim that character is deliberately undermined in the interests of non-representational writing. Rather, Dr Knight explores the relationship between the contents of Flaubert's stories and his practice as a writer, thereby reinstating the functional value of character in his work. She shows that essential aspects of Flaubert's aesthetic - the opaqueness of language, stupidity, fascination and reverie as the object of art - depend on the psychological make-up of fictional characters: their pathological relationship to language and reality mirrors Flaubert's conception of the readers' stupefied response to his own stylistic effects and to his wilfully naive stories. Flaubert emerges as a representational writer, but one who is supremely self-conscious of the fictional status of his representations.

Book details

Book category Books in English Literature & literary studies Literature: history & criticism Literary studies: general

• Full title: Flaubert's Characters
• Subtitle: The Language of Illusion
• Author: Diana Knight
• Language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 136
• EAN: 9780521110587
• ISBN: 0521110580
• ID: 02022196
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Weight: 180 g
• Dimensions: 216 × 140 × 8 mm
• Date of publishing: 07. May 2009

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