Chekhov's Mistress
Soledad Fox on Don Quixote’s influence on Flaubert
Writing in the New England Review, professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature at Williams College Soledad Fox writes…
While many classical and modern authors shaped Flaubert’s ideas about literature, it was Don Quixote that helped Flaubert reconceive his method of writing and led him to write his first great and successful novel, Madame Bovary, published in 1857, when he was forty-six.
Drawing on Flaubert’s biography and comparisons between Don Quixote and Madame Bovary, Fox makes a pretty clear case for Cervantes’ influence.
comments
Soledad Fox’s article is written in lively, enjoyable prose, viz: “Just as Alonso Quijano is a fanatical reader of chivalric romances, Emma is addicted to the sentimental romance. The fact that both characters are incorrigible readers of the popular literature of their respective eras is an unending source of action and ironyâespecially because the novels they favor are démodé and represent worlds that are completely fantastical vis-à -vis the contemporary ârealityâ they actually inhabit.”
She says Cervantes and Flaubert weren’t interested in the social function of these romances, though. It seems to me both books show wonderfully how romances give permission to trample certain values, by presenting them as unattainable ideals. Reading the speeches of our warmongering peacetalking politicians with Emma Bovary’s wedding cake and poor DQ’s battered ribs in mind can keep a person sane.
– Sara Greenwald (03/20 at 11:09 AM)
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About this Post
- Posted by: Bud Parr
- Date: March 17, 2006
- Filed Under:
Wise Men Fish Here: Literature
- Comments:1
- Links to this Post: Technorati
