Flaubert and the Historical Novel: 'Salammbô' Reassessed

by Anne Green

• ISBN13: 9780521155229
• ISBN10: 0521155223
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-03-29
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This 1982 book offers an evaluation of one of Flaubert's major and most controversial novels. Dr Green begins by discussing the nineteenth-century debate about the relation between history and fiction, and examines Flaubert's distinctive responses to it. Then, through a detailed study of the manuscript plans for Salammbô, she shows how Flaubert worked to develop a new kind of historical novel. She shows the balance in his work between careful historical research and imaginative reconstruction; she charts how he modified, amplified, or omitted certain elements in the sources, and suggests his reasons for doing so. The result is a case history of the historical novelist's imagination at work, and one which indicates illuminating perspectives with this area of research. Instead of escaping into a vanished world of the past, Flaubert drew on contemporary French social, political, and economic issues in his recreation of a distant and decadent civilisation nearing its end.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Flaubert and historical fiction

Flaubert and the historians

The genesis and development of Salammbô

Salammbô and nineteenth-century French society

Political and economic parallels

Religion and mythology in Salammbô

Conclusion

Appendix

Notes

Select bibliography

Index

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.