Flaubert épistémologue: autour du dossier médical de Bouvard et Pécuchet par Norioki Sugaya

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Shaw posits that Beckett, in a “quasi-deconstructive move,” “seeks to contradict , undermine and complicate any simple binaristic opposition of making and impotence” (8–9), and she situates Beckett as a thinker of Derridean différance avant la lettre. Structured according to the same logic, her study follows a sometimes bewildering back-and-forth movement, analyzing tropes of fecundity, fertility , and performativity alongside, and in supposed connection with, images of decay, scatology, and failure. This pattern leads to such puzzling statements as the claim that in Beckett, “words (whether written or spoken) are both impotent and yet able to create bodies and texts” (16). Shaw’s study is not without its highpoints ; some of her close textual analysis is admirable, and her concluding reading of Beckett’s novels as “actualization(s) of the creative process” (169) is suggestive. But the path toward that closing gesture is often tortured and contradictory , a difficulty which may be attributed to Shaw’s exhaustive research and dense style of argumentation. Freud, Lacan, Kristeva, and Foucault are placed alongside such disparate thinkers as Bakhtin, Lucretius, and Kierkegaard; historical analysis of Darwinism and Nazism is read into Beckett’s work just as much as biographical anecdotes are. Shaw’s study has an intriguing aim, but its lack of focus or critical point of view fails to arrive at any cogent destination. Emory University (GA) Jacob Hovind SUGAYA, NORIOKI. Flaubert épistémologue: autour du dossier médical de Bouvard et Pécuchet. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010. ISBN 978-90-420-2985-9. Pp. 276. $77. What is the relation between the copious medical research recorded by Flaubert in his notebooks and the final text of Bouvard et Pécuchet? That is the question this book begins to answer as it strictly limits the extent of its inquiry to the notes taken by Flaubert on medical texts related to the first half of the third chapter of the novel. This narrow scope allows Sugaya to make an in-depth study of these notes and their relation to this section of the novel. Sugaya writes that there are 233 pages on medicine in the dossier, which include fourteen pages of “notes on notes” (which seem to be minimal scenarios), and three pages of bibliography . Most of the medical works listed consist of serious scientific writing, but there are a few popular works mixed in as well. At the end of most chapters, Sugaya provides an extremely useful transcription of the notes themselves. She has also compiled a bibliography of medical works consulted in the dossier “Sciences—Médecine. Hygiène,” as well as of medical works listed in other dossiers and works read by Flaubert that are not in the dossiers. Sugaya draws out different aspects of the relation of Flaubert’s medical notes to the final text. Flaubert himself makes a vital link between the scientific works and the characters of Bouvard and Pécuchet when he implies that the medical books actually help him shape his characters: “Je lis toujours des bouquins médicaux , et mes bonshommes se précisent” (19). The different actions and reactions of the two characters often house two differing medical opinions, and Flaubert simply presents these opinions as an opposition through his characters’ differences , without offering any kind of resolution—an example of Flaubert’s distaste for conclusions. A second important analysis made by Sugaya about the information in the notes is of their comical nature. Medicine for Flaubert emerges as 762 FRENCH REVIEW 85.4 received wisdom, which he shows to be at times lewd, farcical, or laughably biased . Thus the serious becomes comical when the ideology of the author makes itself visible. One such example is the idea expressed by one scientist that the ocean is destined for ships and that wood is destined for heating houses. Scientific style itself can become comical when it develops overly flowery rhetoric or excessive exactitude. Thus Flaubert’s notes clearly provide a critique of scientific thought, and Sugaya remarks on the irony of the use of such an extensive compendium of science to undermine science. In mounting his critique, Flaubert singles out medical stupidities and popular errors. Most important, he identifies contradictions in scientific...