Flaubert, Foucault, and the Bibliotheque Fantastique: toward a postmodern epistemology for library science - Gustave Flaubert, Michel Foucault - Qualitative Research

Library Trends, Spring, 1998 by Gary P. Radford

First Voice--Is it women you want?

Second Voice--Money bags, rather!

Third Voice--A shining sword?

Other Voices--All the people admire you!

--Go to sleep!

--You'll cut their throats, you will, you'll cut their throats!

Objects are meanwhile transformed. At the edge of the cliff the old

palm tree with its tuft of yellow leaves becomes the torso of a woman,

leaning over the abyss, her long hair floating. Antony turns toward

his cabin; and the stand supporting the fat book with its pages

loaded with black letters comes to seem like a bush crammed with

swallows.

"It's the torch, of course, a trick of the light. ... Out with it!"

He puts out the torch, and is plunged in darkness. And all at once,

in mid air, first a puddle of water passes by, then a prostitute, a

temple corner, the figure of a soldier, a chariot drawn by two white

horses, rearing. These images occur swiftly, percussively, showing up

against the night like scarlet painted on ebony. They gather speed.

They wheel past at a dizzy pace. At other times, they halt and

gradually fade, or merge; or else they fly away, and others instantly

appear.

Antony closes his eyes. They multiply, surround and besiege him.

Indescribable terror sweeps over him; all he feels is a burning

contraction in the pit of the stomach. Despite the uproar in his

head, he is aware of the huge silence which cuts him off from the

world. He tries to speak: impossible! The overall bond of his being

seems to dissolve; and no longer resisting, Antony falls onto the

mat. (Flaubert, 1874/1980, pp. 70-72)

Antony falls into a realm of dreams and visions. Episodes crowd in rapidly, coming in and out of the saint's attention, as do parades of gods and monsters. Foucault (1967/1977) describes La Tentation being to literature what Bosch was, at one time, to painting. Buck (1966) writes that:

In the final version, the bewildering multiplicity of the dreams and

the nightmares is depicted and presented with consummate art. One is

often reminded of a surrealistic film; strange and striking image

blend and merge, one into the other; forms dissolve; everything is

decaying and passing to oblivion. Yet new forms constantly appear. (p. 60)

In contrast to the text's dreamlike qualities, the figures who constitute the parade of temptations and grotesques were meticulously researched by Flaubert. Bart (1967) writes that Flaubert "began with the mystics; theology and the Bible followed; and before he had written the last lines of The Temptation, he had read almost all the relevant authors, ancient and modern" (p. 175). Foucault (1967/1977, p. 89) gives a more comprehensive listing of "all the relevant authors" that Bart alludes to. A quote from Flaubert's (1874/1980) text provides an example of his erudition:

Steps draw nearer.

"What's that?"

Hilarion stretches out his arm:

"Look! "

And now under a pale beam of moonlight Antony distinguishes an

interminable caravan filing past on the crest of the rocks--and one

after another each traveller topples from the cliff into the pit.

First come the three great gods of Samothrace--Axieros, Axiakeros, and