Marked: Flaubert's Legende de Saint Julien l'hospitalier and the Crux of Literature

Abstract

It has always been viewed with surprise that Flaubert of all people, most sophisticated of realists, left with Trois contes three stories of saints-queer saints, but still saints-as a kind of literary testament.] The three tales begin in modernity, with Felicite, a simple-minded, illiterate and celibate servant who, after a miserable life in which her heart was educated to true love, dies in enraptured felicity, mistaking a stuffed parrot for Holy Ghost: Un coeur simple. Going back in time, last tale ends in antiquity with beheading of Saint John Baptist, interpreted as promise of Christ's kingdom to come: Hirodias. For Middle Ages we have St. Julian, a saint who massacres animals, murders his parents, does penitence and ascends with Our Lord to heaven: La Legende de St. Julien l'hospitalier. Although three tales are set in three different epochs, they are linked by a certain unity of place and of time: Un coeur simple takes place in Pont l'Eveque, which means the bridge of bishop, a city in Normandy; story of Salome and of St. Julian can be found in cathedral of Rouen-the legend of saint on a stained glass window, dancing Salome on a tympanum on North facade. The last sentence of Saint Julien reads: Et voilai l'histoire de saint Julien