Flaubert's Mother Rite: Paradigm Lost

Nineteenth-century mythologists elaborated the myth of hierogamy (Sacred Marriage). The motive impulse of this archaic ritual was to mimetically renew the earth's bounty. The keynote to the modern study was Vico's New Science that situated hierogamy between cradle and grave as middle term in the cycle of dissolution and rebirth. Sacred Marriage illuminates Flaubert's random reflections throughout his canon on (1) the originary creative spark, (2) the common-place where divine and mundane, veneration and incest coalesce, and (3) gravitational pull toward universal dissolution Mythologized, these three strains contribute to shaping interchangeable features of woman as Muse and Medusa and to exploring the veiled interstice between temple and brothel. (RBG)