Undermining Exoticism: Flaubert's Use of Antithesis in L'Éducation sentimentale

Abstract

This article analyses the working of metonymy within structures of antithesis in Flaubert's 1869 Éducation sentimentale, and uses this as the basis for a re-examination of Flaubert's deployment of exotic and colonial motifs. These can best be understood not in isolation but as operating within paradigms. One of the devices used in the service of Flaubert's irony is delayed antithesis, in which an idealized orientalist element is undermined by a colonial or commercial appearance of the same motif. Another is false antithesis, in which two apparently opposed elements recur within a repeated paradigm: an exotic motif, such as a 'negro' statue or an Andalusian belle, appears juxtaposed with a motif that evokes Frenchness, generally in the form of references to the Ancien Régime; but this apparent opposition is unpicked so that both objects are revealed to stand metonymically for false pretensions, industrial art, and the idée reçue.