Violence and Civilization in Flaubert's Salammbô

This essay argues that in Salammbô Flaubert marks a rigorous cultural distinction between the civilized Carthaginians and the barbarous mercenaries that is based on particular practices of violence specific to each one. In drawing this distinction, in maintaining an equivalency in the capacity of each for atrocity, excess, and depravity, and in conferring emblematic status to this conflict, Flaubert disallows any privileging of one cultural order over the other. In this way, Flaubert undermines the principles, tools, and strategies of historical analysis or understanding and figures the events of the story in such a way as to maintain their essential otherness and to situate them at the limits of our conceptual horizon.