This major new study takes issue both with the traditional critical view
that Flaubert's central characters are weak and with the approach
adopted by a number of contemporary critics who claim that character is
deliberately undermined in the interests of non-representational
writing. Rather, Dr Knight explores the relationship between the
contents of Flaubert's stories and his practice as a writer, thereby
reinstating the functional value of character in his work. She shows
that essential aspects of Flaubert's aesthetic - the opaqueness of
language, stupidity, fascination and reverie as the object of art -
depend on the psychological make-up of fictional characters: their
pathological relationship to language and reality mirrors Flaubert's
conception of the readers' stupefied response to his own stylistic
effects and to his wilfully naive stories. Flaubert emerges as a
representational writer, but one who is supremely self-conscious of the
fictional status of his representations.