The French Review

Flaubert, with his aversion to biography and his culte de l'impersonnalité, is an unlikely candidate for an investigation such as Girardin's. Training her sights on the interplay between literary criticism and biography, she aims to "reconstituer le cadre épistémologique à l'intérieur duquel la critique littéraire savante [...] et la biographie d'écrivain ont été amenées à se rencontrer, sans perdre de vue le rôle que la littérature elle-même a pu jouer dans cette rencontre" (12). She fills a long-standing gap left by French and Anglo-Saxon critics alike who have neglected to identify "les enjeux qui fondent [le] voisinage [de la biographie et la critique] et la manière dont celui-ci se fait au sein même du discours" (32). Before turning to Flaubert, Girardin provides a lengthy overview, in part 1, of the relationship between criticism and biography in the nineteenth century, analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of la méthode naturelle and la méthode déterministe as well as the effects of history's emergence, circa 1880, as a discipline. She lingers on Sainte-Beuve, whose position straddles old and new criticism, "[la] critique normative et une critique d'inspiration scientifique" (46), and on the series "Les Grands Écrivains Français," inaugurated in 1887 (with its final volume published in 1964), whose goal was to introduce French readers to their literary heritage. In part 2, Girardin delves into the first studies of Flaubert, commenting along the way on the distinction between la critique journalistique and la critique savante, the concept of l'art pour l'art, Flaubert's esthetic ideals, and his momentous trial. Of note is her treatment of the widely diverging reactions to Madame Bovary, including those of Barbey d'Aurevilly, who considered Flaubert "un entomologiste de style" [End Page 211] (168), and Baudelaire, who, by showcasing theretofore overlooked details such as Emma's virility and "grandeur intellectuelle" (171), liberated the novel from "une réclusion dans laquelle cherche à la tenir enfermée la critique conservatrice pour en faire une œuvre complexe, inépuisable, moderne..." (171). Girardin insists that Flaubert had more in mind than writing a novel on nothing; he envisioned a veritable literary revolution that would breathe new life into both "la sensibilité esthétique" and "le regard critique" (135). The final section scrutinizes the positive feedback offered by the first Flaubertistes (1874–92) and the first biographical writings on Flaubert. Girardin ties the lack of "méga-biographies," even during the twenty years after Flaubert's death in 1880, to the unavailability of information on certain episodes of his life and of letters in his correspondence; to his "haine féroce" for biographers (218); and to the challenge of undertaking the biography of someone whose life was his work (220). Girardin devotes particular attention to the most important category of biographical writing during the second half of the nineteenth century, les notices nécrologiques, striking for their mix of the tragic and the comic. Meticulously documented and densely written, Girardin's book is typical of Champion's output of thesis-like studies (if not theses toutes pures), its intended audience clearly limited to Flaubert specialists.