Le rôle génétique de la correspondance de Gustave Flaubert
The Genetic Role of Gustave Flaubert’s Correspondence

Summary/Abstract: The past thirty years have witnessed the extraordinary development of textual genetics, which proposes to rediscover the work’s text through its rough drafts and its preparatory documents. A work’s collection of genetic documentation includes not only the writer’s autographic work manuscripts (work plans, scenarios, note-pads, documentary notes, rough drafts, fair copies, etc), but also various autographic writings useful to the comprehension of textual genetics such as the author’s correspondence, personal journal, etc. Flaubert’s Correspondence represents, in this context, one of the examples of 19th century writers’ correspondence whose genetic role proves to be extremely important. The letters that the writer sent to his best friends were, little by little, annexed to his work, so that they became a true mirror of the writing process, seen both in theory and practice. The period of time corresponding to the creation of Madame Bovary also covers the last years of the writer’s love relationship with Louise Colet. Their correspondence, as well as that with Louis Bouilhet (one of Flaubert’s best friends), contain a large number of passages in which the chronological references serve as time indicators of the creative process. This is how we find when the writing process begins and we follow its evolution in time. The Correspondence allows us to closely follow Madame Bovary’s long writing process which begins on September 19, 1851: when exactly a chapter was finished, when the writer began writing the next one, how many days were necessary in order to write one scene or another, one chapter or another. Moreover, these letters witness not only the passing of time, but also the torment of a writer searching for the perfect prose. The chronological references are accompanied by various indications of the sources used in the genetic pre-compositional and compositional phases: readings, events that played a decisive role, pieces of information received from a friend, etc. The work letters remain a clear proof of the writer’s intentions towards one scene or another. The first two types of genetic elements mentioned above are accompanied by a third one, equally important: genetic commentaries proper. There are, in Flaubert’s Correspondence, many examples of fragments where the writer comments upon his writing choices, explaining the very complicated mechanism that lies behind each word and each phrase. There are traces of repeated indecisions, optimistic and pessimistic periods; we see how various scenes of the novel are created, one of the most difficult being that of the agricultural show. Our work endeavors to present and analyze various fragments of these letters that show, once and again, that Flaubert’s Correspondence is not exterior to Madame Bovary’s collection of genetic documentation and that the genetic pre-compositional and compositional phases of this novel are fully illustrated in the author’s letters.

• Details
• Contents