Narration as Subject in Flaubert's "La Légende de Saint Julien l'Hospitalier

The ending of Flaubert's "La Légende de Saint Julien l'Hospitalier" suggests that narrative itself is a central subject of the story: Flaubert introduces a first-person narrator who contemplates, in memory, a stained-glass window from which he has reconstructed the story. The psychological activity of the story's narrator demonstrates that narrative, as an activity of memory, functions as a preserver of communal identity and that this identity endows its possessor with the spiritual peace of the saint. The experience of the narrator and that of the saint are therefore parallel. (JEM)