Flaubert and the Difficulty of Reading

From the earliest of the œuvres de jeunesse on, Flaubert consciously challenges his readers. But he mostly does so there by submitting them to the shocks inherent in the material – material that often repeats the satanic rages and cynical poses of the frenetic tales and poems of the petits romantiques. While they sometimes rework such material in immensely richer and more subtle ways, the works of Flaubert's maturity challenge his readers at least as much on the level of formal complexity. By obliging them to engage in the processing of unfamiliar forms of fictional discourse, Flaubert made available new and more demanding kinds of textual experience. In brief, his interest for us resides not least in the determination to make his readers both more wary and more active in the fabrication of æsthetic events. (DP)