Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T14:37:00.088Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Historical Cliché: Irony and the Sublime in L'éducation sentimentale

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Vaheed K. Ramazani
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Flaubert's representation of the 1848 revolution in L'éducation sentimentale brings irony and the sublime into a relation of simultaneous opposition and dependency. An uncertain irony constructs the revolution as an aporia: as both an impoverished imitation of 1789 (a cliché) and a tragic modern apocalypse. Particularly in the famous Fontainebleau episode, where the rhetorical violence of irony is enacted in the analogy between the awesome turbulence of nature and the chaos of a nonteleological historical process, irony gives rise to the affects of fear and transport characteristic of the sublime. And the turn from an uncanny irony to the countermode of self-empowerment is set in motion by the same fear of death that haunts the novel's historiographical intertext, the Micheletist cliché of resurrection. But while the Micheletist sublime constructs a version of historical and ontological truth, the Flaubertian sublime transforms meaninglessness itself into power. Reified as ideology, that power would be neither inflexible nor monolithic, for it emerges and recedes repeatedly in the context of a self-interrogating and fundamentally ironic narrative. (VKR)

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 108 , Issue 1: Special Topic Literature and the Idea of Europe , January 1993 , pp. 121 - 135
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Amossy, Ruth, and Rosen, Elisheva Les discours du cliché. Paris: CDU et SEDES Réunis, 1982.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baldick, Robert, trans Sentimental Education. New York: Penguin, 1964.Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland Michelet. Trans. Howard, Richard. New York: Farrar, 1987.Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland S/Z. Paris: Seuil, 1970.Google Scholar
Bellanger, Claude, et al., eds Histoire générate de la presse française. Vol. 2. Paris: PUF, 1969. 5 vols.Google Scholar
Benjamin, Walter “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Illuminations. Trans. Zohn, Harry. Ed. Arendt, Hannah. London: Fontana, 1973. 219–21.Google Scholar
Booth, Wayne C A Rhetoric of Irony. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1961.Google Scholar
Brombert, Victor “L'éducation sentimentale: Profanation and the Permanence of Dreams.” The Novels of Flaubert: A Study of Themes and Techniques. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1966. 125–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brombert, Victor “Flaubert and the Articulations of Polyvalence.” The Hidden Reader: Stendhal, Balzac, Hugo, Baudelaire, Flaubert. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1988. 136–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brombert, Victor “Idyll and Upheaval in L'éducation sentimentale.” The Hidden Reader: Stendhal, Balzac, Hugo, Baudelaire, Flaubert. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1988. 130–13.Google Scholar
Brooks, Peter “Retrospective Lust; or, Flaubert's Perversities.” Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative. New York: Random, 1984. 171–215.Google Scholar
Burke, Edmund A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful. Ed. Boulton, James T. London: Routledge, 1958.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burke, Edmund Reflections on the Revolution in France. Reflections on the Revolution in France and The Rights of Man. New York: Doubleday, 1961. 15–266.Google Scholar
Chambers, Ross Mélancolie et opposition: Les débuts du modernisme en France. Paris: Corti, 1987.Google Scholar
Compagnon, Antoine La Troisième République des lettres, de Flaubert à Proust. Paris: Seuil, 1983.Google Scholar
Culler, Jonathan Flaubert: The Uses of Uncertainty. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1975.Google Scholar
de Man, Paul “The Rhetoric of Temporality.” Blindness and Insight. Theory and History of Literature 7. 2nd ed. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1983. 187–228.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques “Différence.” Margins of Philosophy. Trans. Bass, Alan. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1982. 1–27.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques Of Grammatology. Trans. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1976.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques Speech and Phenomena. Speech and Phenomena and Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs. Trans. David B. Allison. Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy, Existential. Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1973. 1–104.Google Scholar
Duisit, Lionel Satire, parodie, calembour: Esquisse d'une théorie des modes dévalués. Saratoga: Anma Libri, 1978.Google Scholar
Flaubert, Gustave Correspondance. 9 vols. Paris: Conard, 1926–33.Google Scholar
Flaubert, Gustave Correspondance. Ed. Bruneau, Jean. 3 vols. to date. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. Paris: Gallimard, 1973-Google Scholar
Flaubert, Gustave L'éducation sentimentale. Œuvres complètes. Vol. 2. Paris: Seuil, 1964. 8–163. 2 vols.Google Scholar
Gasché, Rodolphe “‘Setzung’ and ‘Übersetzung’: Notes on Paul de Man.” Diacritics 11.4 (1981): 36–57.Google Scholar
Hertz, Neil “A Reading of Longinus.” The End of the Line: Essays on Psychoanalysis and the Sublime. New York: Columbia UP, 1985. 1–20.Google Scholar
Jefferson, Ann Reading Realism in Stendhal. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel Critique of Judgment. Trans. Bernard, J. H. London: Hafner, 1951.Google Scholar
Lacan, Jacques “Subversion du sujet et dialectique du désir dans l'inconscient freudien.” Ecrits. Paris: Seuil, 1966. 793–827.Google Scholar
LaCapra, Dominick “Collapsing Spheres in Flaubert's Sentimental Education.” History, Politics, and the Novel. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1987. 83–110.Google Scholar
Longinus On the Sublime. Trans. Arieti, James A. and Crosset, John M. Texts and Studies in Religion 21. New York: Mellen, 1985.Google Scholar
Lyotard, Jean-Francois The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Trans. Bennington, Geoff and Massumi, Brian. Theory and History of Literature 10. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1984.Google Scholar
Marx, Karl The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. New York: International, 1972.Google Scholar
Michelet, Jules History of the French Revolution. Trans. Charles Cocks. Classic European Historians. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1967.Google Scholar
Muecke, Douglas C The Compass of Irony. London: Methuen, 1969.Google Scholar
Nietzsche, Friedrich The Use and Abuse of History. Trans. Collins, Adrian. 2nd ed. New York: Macmillan, 1985.Google Scholar
Oehler, Dolf “L'échec de 1848.” L'arc 79 (1980): 58–68.Google Scholar
Petrey, D. Sandy “Representing Revolution.” Diacritics 9.2 (1979): 2–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ramazani, Jahan Yeats and the Poetry of Death: Elegy, Self-Elegy, and the Sublime. New Haven: Yale UP, 1990.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ramazani, Vaheed K The Free Indirect Mode: Flaubert and the Poetics of Irony. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1988.Google Scholar
Ramazani, Vaheed K “Lacan/Flaubert: Towards a Psychopoetics of Irony.” Romanic Review 80 (1989): 548–54.Google Scholar
Sartre, Jean-Paul L'idiot de la famille. Vol. 1. Paris: Gallimard, 1971–72. 3 vols.Google Scholar
Schiller, Friedrich von “Naive and Sentimental Poetry” and “On the Sublime”: Two Essays. Trans. Elias, Julius A. New York: Ungar, 1966.Google Scholar
Schlegel, Friedrich Literary Notebooks, 1797–1801. Ed. Eichner, Hans. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1957.Google Scholar
Steegmuller, Francis, trans The Letters of Gustave Flaubert. By Gustave Flaubert. 2 vols. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1979–82.Google Scholar
Terdiman, Richard Discourse/Counter-discourse: The Theory and Practice of Symbolic Resistance in Nineteenth-Century France. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1985.Google Scholar
Weiskel, Thomas The Romantic Sublime: Studies in the Structure and Psychology of Transcendence. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1976.Google Scholar
White, Hayden Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1973.Google Scholar
White, Hayden “The Politics of Historical Interpretation: Discipline and De-sublimation.” The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1987. 58–82.Google Scholar
White, Hayden “The Problem of Style in Realistic Representation: Marx and Flaubert.” The Concept of Style. Ed. Lang, Berel. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1979. 213–21.Google Scholar
Wing, Nathaniel The Limits of Narrative: Essays on Baudelaire, Flaubert, Rimbaud and Mallarmé. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986.Google Scholar
Wood, Theodore E. B The Word “Sublime” and Its Context, 1650–1760. The Hague: Mouton, 1972.Google Scholar