Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism | Flaubert, Gustave - Diana Knight (essay date 1985)

Diana Knight (essay date 1985)

SOURCE: "The Merits of Inarticulacy," in Flaubert's Characters: The Language of Illusion, Cambridge University Press, 1985, pp. 25-40.

[In the following essay, Knight examines Flaubert's "simple" characters who lack the ability to articulate their experiences effectively, and argues that Flaubert "suggests an important connection between moral and aesthetic values" in these types of characters.]

Although his 'weak vessels' have often attracted critical disapproval, Flaubert himself suggests an important connection between moral and aesthetic values in so-called 'simple' characters:

Les mots sublimes (que l'on rapporte dans les histories) ont été dits souvent par des simples. Ce qui n'est nullement un argument contre l'Art, au contraire, car ils avaient ce qui fait l'Art même, à savoir la pensée concrétée, un...

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