Flaubert's Pharmacy

"Flaubert's Pharmacy" focuses on the ambivalent status of writing and reading in Madame Bovary and on the images of drugs and poisons that express that ambivalence. Using what J.-P. Sartre calls Flaubert's "passive synthesis," we consider the intertexts of Madame Bovary. Flaubert's allusions to texts by Sir Walter Scott and Choderlos de Laclos are organized around the poisonous effects of writing. Writing and reading are as poisonous to Flaubert's characters as they were to Flaubert himself. Finally, Flaubert's ambivalent view of writing demands a reassessment of his role in the history of French realism. (MIL)