Flaubert's Literary Shop in Times of "Industrial" Art

Abstract

Amherst College f' C\onsistent with the well-known denunciation ofthe common other's discourse, therẽ is in Flaubert a critique of the 'natural' setting of this discourse. What Baudelaire called "le lieu commun, le lieu de rencontre de la foule, le rendezvous public de l'eloquence"10 can take place in a specific physical space. An example ofthis can be found in the representation of lules' disillusions with, first, an "assemblee philanthropique," and then, a "societe de temperance" (L 'Education sentimentale, 1845 version, 359)-these disillusions are similar to those of Frederic at the Club de l'Intelligence in the second version ofthis book. The setting ofsocial discourse plays an important role in the criticism and the incorporation of commonplaces in the narrative. In fact, the term 'commonplace' can be taken literally, to mean a public space in which commonplaces are regularly exchanged. In some instances, this space, or the society associated with it, is missing, and the prosaic discourse of the commonplace stops, as in the case of Homais speaking about religion: "il se tut, cherchant des yeux un public autour de lui" (Madame Bovary, 80). From "la Place des cornices en elle-meme" (Madame Bovary, 150) and all the discourses both public and private developed on this square ll , to L 'Art industriel (Arnoux's shop in L 'Education sentimentale), and since the remarks on "1 'instinct d'aller en troupeau" (Memoires d'unfou, 238), such a space is skillfully designed by the Flaubertian narratives. Arnoux's boutique L 'Art industriel, due to its central situation in Paris and the common characteristics of the characters who visit it regularly, appears literally as a center of production of commonplaces; and these commonplaces are inserted into the text in order to create ironic effects that caricature the artist type: L' Art industriel, pose au point central de Paris, etait un lieu de rendezvous commode, un terrain neutre Oll les rivalites se coudoyaient familierement. On y voyait, ce jour-la, Antenor Braive, le portraitiste des rois; lules Burrieu, qui commens:ait a populariser par ses dessins les guerres d'Algerie; le caricaturiste Sombaz, le sculpteur Vourdat, d' autres encore, et aucun ne repondait aux prejuges de l'etudiant. Leurs manieres