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“Despite the
frequent references to Cervantes in Flaubert’s Correspondence,
specialist critics of Flaubert have paid surprisingly scant attention
to the profound and complex intertextual reverberations of Don Quijote
on the subject matter and style of all of
… Flaubert’s
major novels. Soledad Fox’s study therefore marks an important
first step to such a thoroughgoing re-evaluation by focusing specifically
on the singular and genre-breaking facets of Cervantes’ work
that found such appeal for Flaubert as he grappled in his own early
works with the temptations and folly of Romanticism from which he
created and honed Madame Bovary. … the close readings
of episodes in Don Quijote and Madame Bovary in
the final chapter set a clear course for future analyses, for example
of Bouvard et Pécuchet. This book thus offers an
antidote to notions of undecidability and misanthropy in Flaubert,
by being a highly readable and refreshing comparative understanding
both of Flaubert’s narrative stances, irony and aesthetic
priorities, and of their rich debt to longer European literary heritages
particularly in times of strict censorship.” Forum for
Modern Language Studies
“A fascinating, authoritative study of
Don Quijote and Madame Bovary, written with precision and clarity.
Richly defining their cultural, social, and historical contexts,
Prof. Fox develops a highly intelligent analysis of Cervantes’
influence on Flaubert’s novel and offers fresh insight concerning
their differences, especially the contrast between the authors’
conceptions of their central characters.” David Kleinbard,
Professor Emeritus, City University of New York
“Flaubert used Cervantes’ great novel
as a model in his attempt to renew literature, to liberate him from
the grasp of dominant literary schools. But the significance of
Fox’s study goes far beyond a detailed analysis of a single
case in the history of literature. It is a ‘comparative’
study in the deepest sense of this term. The book shows how the
discontent with actual literature in both cases of Cervantes and
Flaubert leads first of all toward an ironic parody, distantiation
from the dominant trends and later to radically new forms of artistic
consciousness…The study is full of insights and is made by
a very subtle and intelligent scholar who has a rare capacity not
to force the material, but to listen to its voice with extraordinary
respect and acumen.” Mikhail Iampolski, professor of comparative
literature, NYU
“The affinities between Flaubert
and Cervantes have often intrigued the readers of Madame Bovary
and Don Quixote. Are their heroes victims of literature or a menace
to society? Professor Fox’s original study and unexpected
insights bring to light the manifold historical, social and aesthetic
links between the two authors and their protagonists, and fill a
real void in both the fields of Flaubert and Cervantes studies.”
Professor A. Nematollahy, Department of Modern Languages, City University
of New York
“Often, the history of literary criticism becomes bogged
down in clichés and repetitive simplifications: an opinion,
an idea, a seductive synthesis is forwarded and it remains for years,
even centuries, as the solid truth. This is what seems to have happened
with the relationship between Cervantes and Flaubert, frequently
limited to the oft-repeated anecdote of the child fascinated with
Don Quijote, a fascination that dates the birth of Flaubert
the writer “avec la lecture qu’on luit fait du Quichotte”
(Yvan Leclerc, “Preface”, Flaubert, Memories d’un
fou, Novembre et autres textes de jeunesse, Paris, 1991, 12).
Beyond this ultimately biographical argument, the sole literary
relationship between both authors is usually limited those studies
dedicated exclusively or primarily to Madame Bovary that
point out in passing the coincidence between Don Quijote and Emma
due to a fervor for reading that causes daydreaming impossible illusions.
And this in turn becomes immediately suspect of what turned out
to be another disillusion, for us this time, and especially for
comparative literature, namely, that of a world literature dreamed
by Goethe, Schiller, and the German Romantics, one that would join
nations and overcome nationalisms. The broadening and deepening
of the literary kinship between Cervantes and Flaubert that Professor
Fox’s book reveals, in itself suffices to prove once again
how far we still are from that intellectually and spiritually laudable
dream, a distance no doubt expanded even more by what Ortega y Gasset
aptly labeled la barbarie de la especialización,
or the barbarity of specialization, particularly detrimental, of
course, to Comparative Literature.
… Five chapters prepare us
for the final “Madame Bovary and Don Quijote”
dedicated explicitly to a comparison between both works. These previous
chapters contextualize the two authors within their respective eras
and predominating literary trends and influences of the times. In
this respect, Fox’s book is another study that reestablishes
a welcome balance between biography and literary production, often
lost in certain Twentieth Century studies not limited necessarily
to New Criticism or pure explication de texte critics.
The evolution of the two writers is traced from both their readings
and their earlier works. The positive influence of Erasmian and
Italian Renaissance literature on Cervantes (where, however, we
miss the mention of Ariosto’s Orlando furioso), and
that of the classics, both ancient and French, to which Flaubert’s
reading evolved; the rejection of chivalry romances by Cervantes
and of melodramatic Romanticism by Flaubert that led in both cases
to the brilliant irony of literary parody; the analysis of common
influences on the Spaniard and the Frenchman (including Erasmus,
incidentally, evidenced for Fox in Memories d’un fou),
as well as common influences exerted by Cervantes which may have
reached Flaubert through other authors (Goethe standing out here):
Fox delves into a truly thought-provoking comparative analysis that,
as usual in the always slippery issue of literary influences, may
raise eyebrows, but usually also to lower them again, if not yet
convincingly, then at least sufficiently intriguingly as to pursue
further exploration. In certain comparisons, however, a neat differentiation
between influence and mere intertextuality (case of Maese Pedro’s
retablo or puppet show in Don Quijote and the
opera Lucia di Lammermoor in Madame Bovary, for
example) results for us a more plausible solution to textual coincidences.
Interestingly enough, this same opera offers a more solid comparison,
that of chivalry romance – Don Quijote, on the one
hand, and Romantic literature, Madame Bovary, on the other
– in the section dedicated to Walter Scott’s The
Bride of Lammermoor, where once again Fox transcends the passing
mention – if that – of so many studies that may casually
allude to Scott’s novel as the source of Donizetti’s
Lucia di Lammermoor, of which Emma was so fond. Not only
does Fox pose the possibility of another indirect Cervantes influence
on Flaubert through no less a secondary author as Walter Scott,
but indeed Fox goes so far as to argue with repeated textual support
that what Amadís de Gaula was to Don Quijote, The
Bride of Lammermoor was to Madame Bovary.
… Flaubert and
Don Quijote definitely fills in a void long overdue concerning two
masters of the novel form without whose works that genre would not
be what it is today. Indeed, given the incomprehensible lack of
lack of comparative studies between both authors and their respective
works, evidenced once again in the extensive bibliography provided
by Fox, her book may very well classify as a pioneer work. As such,
it paves the way for many and varied issues and questions of special
interest to comparative literature: where does Henry Fielding, whose
Cervantine concept of the epic in prose antedates that of both Goethe
and Flaubert, enter into all this, for one; or how many other Cervantine
works have influenced Flaubert; or how does Cervantes reach other
authors through Flaubert; or – to pass on to an issue pertaining
also to the sociology of literature – how could such two contrasting
lives (a haphazard, adventurous, marginalized, economically-deprived
and, if we are to credit certain Cervantine biographers, bohemian
life, versus Flaubert’s methodical, disciplined, secure existence)
have spawned two authors and works so similar in so many ways, especially
when it comes to the conscious and conscientious aspect which Unamuno
denied Cervantes, and which Fox’s study once again supports
through the comparison with the French novelist.
… In short, as with any critical
work of lasting value, the explosive capacity of Flaubert
and Don Quijote with regards to awakening the reader to new possibilities
and perspectives, responds neatly to the challenging contents successfully
met of two authors tantamount to the conception of that most elusive
of genres, the modern novel.” Eugenio Suárez-Galbán,
American Comparative Literature Studies
“Fox draws comparisons between Cervantes’ Don Quixote
and Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. After placing Cervantes within
a historical and literary tradition, she turns to Flaubert and the
acknowledged influence Cervantes had on him. While, initially, the
books may seem totally dissimilar, Fox points out many parallels,
particularly in literary intent and social commentary.”
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