Flaubert: Revue Critique et Génétique (Jun 2023)
Réversibilité du mépris dans Bouvard et Pécuchet ou comment « saper les bases » de la société
Abstract
While it may appear to be a possible response to the vanity and stupidity denounced by the writer in his Correspondence, contempt is a reversible feeling. An examination of several episodes in Bouvard et Pécuchet shows that it is part of a particularly devious "return to sender" mechanism. The impossibility of stabilising the points of view expressed in this way leads us to observe an "equality of everything" that is a joyfully denigrating impersonality.
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