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The Family Idiot

The Family Idiot: Gustave Flaubert 1821-1857 - Volume 5

jean-paul sartre carol cosman

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With this volume, the University of Chicago Press completes its translation of a work that is indispensable not only to serious readers of Flaubert but to anyone interested in the last major contribution by one of the twentieth century's greatest thinkers.

That Sartre's study of Flaubert, The Family Idiot, is a towering achievement in intellectual history has never been disputed. Yet critics have argued about the precise nature of this novel or biography or "criticism-fiction" which is the summation of Sartre's philosophical, social, and literary thought. In the preface, Sartre " The Family Idiot is the sequel to Search for a Method. The what, at this point in time, can we know about a man? It seemed to me that this question could only be answered by studying a specific case."

Sartre discusses Flaubert's personal development, his relationship to his family, his decision to become a writer, and the psychosomatic crisis or "conversion" from his father's domination to the freedom of his art. Sartre blends psychoanalysis with a sociological study of the ideology of the period, the crisis in literature, and Flaubert's influence on the future of literature.

While Sartre never wrote the final volume he envisioned for this vast project, the existing volumes constitute in themselves a unified work—one that John Sturrock, writing in the Observer, called "a shatteringly fertile, digressive and ruthless interpretation of these few cardinal years in Flaubert's life."

"A virtuoso perfomance. . . . For all that this book does to make one reconsider his life, The Family Idiot is less a case study of Flaubert than it is a final installment of Sartre's mythology. . . . The translator, Carol Cosman, has acquitted herself brilliantly."—Frederick Brown, New York Review of Books

"A splendid translation by Carol Cosman. . . . Sartre called The Family Idiot a 'true novel,' and it does tell a story and eventually reach a shattering climax. The work can be described most simply as a dialectic, which shifts between two seemingly alternative interpretations of Flaubert's a psychoanalytic one, centered on his family and on his childhood, and a Marxist one, whose guiding themes are the status of the artist in Flaubert's period and the historical and ideological contradictions faced by his social class, the bourgeoisie."—Fredric Jameson, New York Times Book Review

Jean-Paul Sartre (1906-1980) was offered, but declined, the Nobel Prize for literature in 1964. His many works of fiction, drama, and philosophy include the monumental study of Flaubert, The Family Idiot , and The Freud Scenario , both published in translation by the University of Chicago Press.

632 pages, cloth

First published January 1,1977
Series
The Family Idiot

This edition

Format
632 pages, cloth
Published
January 26, 1994 by University of Chicago Press
ISBN
9780226735191
ASIN
0226735192
Language
English
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  • Gustave Flaubert

    Gustave Flaubert

    Gustave Flaubert (1821 - 1880) was an influential French novelist who was perhaps the leading exponent of literary realism in his country. He is known especially for his first published novel, Madame Bovary (1857), for his Correspondence, and for his scru...

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About the author

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jean-paul sartre

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Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic, considered a leading figure in 20th-century French philosophy and Marxism. Sartre was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism (and phenomenology). His work has influenced sociology, critical theory, post-colonial theory, and literary studies. He was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature despite attempting to refuse it, saying that he always declined official honors and that "a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution."
Sartre held an open relationship with prominent feminist and fellow existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir. Together, Sartre and de Beauvoir challenged the cultural and social assumptions and expectations of their upbringings, which they considered bourgeois, in both lifestyles and thought. The conflict between oppressive, spiritually destructive conformity (mauvaise foi, literally, 'bad faith') and an "authentic" way of "being" became the dominant theme of Sartre's early work, a theme embodied in his principal philosophical work Being and Nothingness (L'Être et le Néant, 1943). Sartre's introduction to his philosophy is his work Existentialism Is a Humanism (L'existentialisme est un humanisme, 1946), originally presented as a lecture.

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بلندترین اثر منتشر شده از سارتر (در سه جلد، که گویا جلد چهارمی هم داشته که نیمه تمام مانده)، در مورد گوستاو فلوبر و تاثیر او بر ادبیات داستانی فرانسه و جهان است. سارتر از این نمونه زندگی نامه ها به سبک و روال خود، چند تایی نوشته، از آن جمله اند "ژان ژنه، مقدس و بازیگر" و همین طور در مورد "بودلر" و "داستایفسکی"، "مالارمه" و...

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