Flaubert épistémologue: autour du dossier médical de Bouvard et Pécuchet (review)

In Flaubert Epistémologue, Sugana provides the reader with a detailed and precise analysis of the genesis of Flaubert's unfinished novel Bouvard et Pécuchet. There is much serious and accomplished about this book, especially when we consider its complex nature and the many in depth studies of this novel that many serious scholars have undertaken over the years. This particular work is also difficult to place into a clear-cut narrative form because of its inherently encyclopedic nature. As Sugana points out, this is because the main characters of the novel, Bouvard and Pécuchet do not detach themselves from the epistemological framework with which Flaubert was himself confronted with while writing. That is to say that Bouvard and Pécuchet have no identity of their own, but rather adopt their personality following a logical narrative development based on their own encyclopedic analyses. "À chaque étape de leur traversée encyclopédique, ils se déguisent en se donnant un modèle à imiter" (p. 12). In this manner, Bouvard et Pécuchet, following Sugana's logical demonstration, is a fundamental interrogation dealing with the polemic based on the antagonistic relationship between received ideas and scientific ideas.

Sugana's work, written in excellent French, helps the reader to define scientific discourse and the role it plays in the genesis of Flaubert's novel; his analysis of science as the language of origin and its deep resonances in the creative process proves invaluable for a deeper understanding, not only of the intention of Flaubert's work, but of its reception as well. Sugana convincingly argues that Flaubert's own notes, which are used as proof of the critical dimension of Flaubert's novel, are a resourceful means of understanding this enigmatic fictional narrative form.

The creative juxtaposition of scientific discourse with the "encyclopedic" novel as Flaubert defines it offers new ways of interpreting the main characters, but equally leads to insights into the use of language and its transposition in an unrelated, wholly fictional realm. Sugana's chapters are well organized and lead us into the heart of the subject in a comical manner. Examples of such chapters are Flaubert's readings of medical texts (I), les (bêtises) médicales (II), popular medical misconceptions/monsters and monstrosities (III), the comic nature of "strange experiments" like those of Claude Bernard (IV), medical contradictions (V), and hygiene (VII). Perhaps the most ambitious element of Sugana's work is the transcription of Flaubert's notes at the end of each chapter, which provides the scholars of Flaubert with important archival notes pertaining to the author's understanding and comical relationship with scientific discourse, information that would take a considerable amount of time to accumulate if not for Sugana's work.

Flaubert's appropriation of high and low registers, of the scientific and the comic is seen as a strategy aimed at rethinking societal standards. Sugana brilliantly examines this relationship, thus hinting at Flaubert's narrative style as a means of inverting expectations. This fruitful reinterpretation of Bouvard et Pécuchet helps us revisit Flaubert's writing at large, through which the author attempts to debase the newly defined forces of modernity. "L'œuvre de Flaubert tire son intensité d'une distillation verbale complexe, qui seule peut déterminer la transmutation des faits bruts en forme esthétique" (p. 255). Sugana clearly defines Flaubert's relationship with la bêtise, from which Flaubert makes all attempts to distance himself, for the true writer only finds his purpose in an ascetic and studious life, reminding us that critical distance with the discourse of modernity is the only way of writing the absurdity of one's own time.