Sujets d’Histoire : les renaissances de L’Éducation sentimentale

• Main Author: Judith Frömmer
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Institut des Textes & Manuscrits Modernes (ITEM) 2016-06-01
• Series: Flaubert: Revue Critique et Génétique
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/flaubert/2533

As a narrative principle and structure of the Histoire d’un jeune homme staged by the L’Éducation sentimentale, the role of the Renaissance goes beyond an ironic performance of a 19th century trend (which actually brought into being the Renaissance as a historical epoch). It also goes beyond historical escapism or an aesthetic critique of the visual and plastic arts in the “age of mechanic reproduction”. Taken in its radical non-theological dimensions, the concept of rebirth as it is renegotiated by Flaubert’s novel offers a vision on history and historicity which, through the materiality of art, challenges all organs of human reproduction, especially by replacing the use of central perspective and the correlative notions of subjectivity by a “manière absolue de voir les choses”.