The sources for La Légende de Saint Julien l’Hospitalier, one of Flaubert’s finest literary works, have long been the subject of numerous conflicting theories. The implications of the controversy are broad and important, not only for Flaubert’s work but also for our understanding of how writers generally use traditional material. Superficial resemblances have led critics to conclude that Flaubert relied heavily on a medieval tale of Saint Julian and that he borrowed details and specific phrases from his medieval predecessor. This book, by a world renowned specialist in Flaubert studies and a medieval philologist, demonstrates that the Légende is not medieval in structure or in spirit, and that its conception is distinctly modern; where Flaubert borrowed at all he used contemporary sources to recast the Julian legend in Romantic style. Bart and Cook establish definitely what legendary sources were and show how Flaubert came into contact with them. Their extensive commentary compares the sources and the Légende in detail, explains the circumstances under which Flaubert used his materials, and analyses how they were woven into the texture of his own tale. The book makes available source material scattered throughout obscure periodicals, reproduces accurately and dates correctly important segments of Flaubert’s drafts and scenarios, and provides the first modern printed edition of the Alençon life of Saint Julian which Lecointre-Dupont adapted in 1838, thereby giving Flaubert indirect access to the old tale. An introductory chapter explores the broader question of the development of legends and how a particular legendary sequence, embodying powerful themes, was amplified and made explicit from the twelfth century to Flaubert’s time.

A few years before his death, Gustave Flaubert finally returned to the adaptation of a legend that had fascinated him since adolescence. The result was The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaler, one of his celebrated Three Tales. According to tradition, Julian was a nobleman who turned to a life of self-denial after unwittingly fulfilling a prophecy that he would kill his parents. In Flaubert's hands the legend takes on astonishing complexity and depth. He portrays Julian as a man bound, like Oedipus, by an inexorable fate; a man capable of great cruelty and great piety who both dreads and desires that fate. In Saint/Oedipus, three practitioners of psychocriticism take a close look at Flaubert's powerful and problematic story. Focusing on recurrent patterns of the text, their essays not only shed light on the work itself but constitute an expert introduction to the methods of psychoanalytic criticism. Each contributor approaches The Legend of Saint Julian from a different perspective, drawing on the systems of Freud, Jung, Sartre, and the Chicago school of psychoanalysis. The book includes William Berg's translation of an essay on Saint Julian by Sartre—drawn from his biography of Flaubert, L'Idiot de la famille—which offers compelling insights into the psychological makeup of Flaubert. Two noteworthy features of the book are a fluent and faithful new translation of Saint Julian by Michel Grimaud, and a comprehensive reader's guide to the literature treating psychoanalytic theory and its application to literary texts.

Gustave Flaubert is probably the most famous novelist of nineteenth-century France, and his best known work, Madame Bovary, is read in numerous comparative literature and French courses. His fiction set the standard to which other authors turned to learn their craft, and his cult of art and his unrelenting search for stylistic perfection inspired many later writers, such as Maupassant, Proust, Conrad, Faulkner, and Joyce. His denunciation of materialistic, corrupt society; his fascination with altered states of consciousness; his oscillation between metaphysical longings and a radical nihilism; and his deep-seated mistrust of the adequacy of words themselves anticipate the works of contemporary authors. This reference is a convenient guide to his life and writings. Included in this volume are several hundred alphabetically arranged entries on Flaubert's individual works and major characters; historical persons and events that shaped his life; the themes that run throughout his writings; the critical approaches employed by scholars studying his works; and related topics of interest. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and most close with a brief bibliography. All of his major works are treated at length, and the volume mentions nearly every unpublished project of his that has a title. The book concludes with a selected, general bibliography of major studies.

The three works in this book are each strikingly different. Death, Satan and Nero (the fifth Roman emperor) converse in a prose poem; a Medieval saint encounters trial and struggle before attaining divinity; the life of a selfless maid in 19th-century France shows the horror of true altruism.