Flaubert and the Historical Novel

This 1982 book offers an evaluation of one of Flaubert's major and most controversial novels, Salammbô.

This 1982 book evaluates of one of Flaubert's 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. She goes on to show how Flaubert worked to develop a new kind of historical novel.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.