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

Axiokersa--bunched together, masked in scarlet and raising their arms.

Eesculapius advances in a melancholy manner without even seeing Samos

and Telesphorus, who anxiously question him. Sosipolis, the Elean

python-shaped, rolls his coils towards the abyss. Doespoina giddily

throws herself in. Britomartis, howling with fright, clings to the

meshes of her net. The centaurs arrive at a stiff gallop, and bowl

pell-mell into the black hole. Behind them limp the pathetic troop of

Nymphs. Those of the meadows are covered in dust, those of the woods

moan and bleed, wounded by the woodmens' axes.

The Gelludes, the Striges, the Empusas, all the infernal goddesses

mixing their fangs and torches and vipers form a pyramaid--and up on

top, on a vulture's skin, Eurynome, blue as a blowfly, devours her own

arms. Then in an eddy vanish all at once: bloodthirsty Orthia, Hymnia

of Orchomenus, the Patreans' Laphria, Aphaea of Aegina, Bendis of

Thrace, bird-thighed Stymphalia. Instead of three eyes Triopas has

nothing but three orbits. Erichthonius, his legs flabby, crawls like

a cripple on his wrists.

Hilarion--"What a pleasure, don't you think, to see them all abject

and in agony! Climb up with me onto this stone; and you'll be like

Xerxes reviewing his army." (p. 196)

Many critics viewed La Tentation as a failure. For example, Bart (1967) writes that "long arid stretches of Saint Anthony are only mildly curious in an antiquarian sort of way. Some of it is inescapably dull and unconvincing or uninteresting" (p. 585). Starkie (1967), in a similar fashion, writes that, "taken as a whole, La Tentation de Saint Antoine is formless and diffuse, and largely unreadable today except for those with specialized knowledge" (p. 165). Culler (1974) writes that "one might postulate that the Tentation was designed to be exasperating and incomprehensible, `un livre sur rien,' in that all these phantoms and temptations amount, finally, to nothing" (p. 180).

These reactions are revealing because they represent a failure to reconcile the dreamlike with the scholarly. How can one speak of hallucinations and visions based in scholarly research? In the same vein, how can it be considered appropriate to represent scholarly work as a disordered dream? For example, Buck (1966) writes that "Flaubert apprehended the culture of venerable traditions and submitted to a severe discipline of study and research. The erudition which he brought to his dream is overwhelming--too much so perhaps for most readers" (p. 60). Bart (1967) makes a similar critique:

Where he could find adequate sources, Flaubert reinforced, condensed,

or amalgamated them to produce an accurate mosaic as the basis for a

passage; only thereafter would he go beyond his historical sources to

literary considerations. His effort, as he had insisted from the

beginning,was to complete history, to formulate its implications and

achieve its intentions; it was not to be a new start, much less a

romantic and personal overlay or substitution. His erudition was to

keep him from lyrical surges of personalism. Or so, at least, he