‘Une tortue avec des ailes’: Progressing in Flaubert’s Bouvard et Pécuchet

This article considers Flaubert’s relationship to the nineteenth-century belief in progress. It focuses on his last, uncompleted novel, Bouvard et Pécuchet (1880). Progress is discussed as a historical force of momentum which can be analysed through the metaphor of the journey. The contention is that Flaubert’s writing offers a complex response to the flux of history and is detected in Bouvard et Pécuchet through the structural dualism offered by the characters’ differences, and through the obstacle-strewn journeys they undertake as they embark on their quest for knowledge. Virgil Nemoianu’s study of literature and progress, A Theory of the Secondary, offers a model for the dynamic found in Flaubert’s work. Nemoianu suggests a movement whereby progress is achieved not necessarily in spite of obstacles but as a result of the impediments to linear progression that they provide. These contradictory energies are found in Flaubert’s novel and are examined in relation to two of the numerous expeditions undertaken by Bouvard and Pécuchet: their initial move from Paris to the countryside, and a later trip to Fécamp pursued as part of their research into geology.