Contrast of Politics in Bouvard and Pecuchet by Gustave Flaubert Mark Polizzotti - Research Paper Example

? Theory vs. Practice: the contrast of Politics in "Bouvard and Pecuchet" by Gustave Flaubert Mark Polizzotti Inserts His/Her Inserts Grade Course Customer Inserts Tutor’s Name 4 April 2012 Flaubert’s Bouvard and Pecuchet story shows how political, social, and other community lives is seen during Gustave Flaubert’s time period. The research centers on the two friend’s research on the political and other aspects of the lives of the Flaubert’s time period. The research delves in the two friend’s contradictory impression of their community’s political and other concepts. In terms of the research paper, the two copy clerk friends have the political liberty to conform with society’s political rules but chose to run against the very grain of society’s political does and don’ts in Gustave Flaubert’s Bouvard and Pecuchet masterpiece. Alastar Smart (39) states Flaubert was not to endure fools happily or bear the stultified thinking of a puffed-up bourgeoisie. After 25 years, and with society that is not yet cultivated, the author engineered returned “back onto my contemporaries the disgust they inspire in me" - the result of such promise is this blackly comic, with the crafting of the literary masterpiece, Bouvard and Pecuchet. The story was originally titled The Story of Two Nobodies, it makes the dunderheaded challenges of two copy clerks, who finally decided to call for early retirement to enter a world of constantly changing global scientific discoveries. In their self-deluded minds, the two friends negatively hop from one disaster to another, just like the story of the two Don Quixotes of the scientific field, also likened to the Laurel and Hardy busily engaging in many failed scientific research and development experiments. The two friends show their freedom to do what they want in life, find loopholes in the scientific, social, and political theories of their time. Nancy Hirschmann (213) insists that “Hegel and Marx developed understandings of political freedom that worked from complicated understandings of desire and will, and they clearly adopted positive liberty's idea of the divided self. Furthermore, truly foreshadowing, if not founding, contemporary elaborations on positive liberty, Hegel in particular lent the “fear factor” to the idea of positive liberty”. When pronouncing that the nation, as an independent unit instead of a democratic collective, was the final repository of the group will and thereby of the person’s true will, Hegel theorized the interpretation of positive liberty by Berlin as well as other proponents as a political concept of totalitarianism. For his own contribution, Karl Marx created the case for observing huge social factors, capitalism, as socially built hindrances to the people’s ability to avoid what they prefer, but to establish prioritized wants. Thus, political theory dictates that freedom is associated to or synonymous with timeless positive liberty ideals, which the two friends refused. In addition, Mark Polizzotti (Flaubert 1) translated the the Bouvard and Pecuchet story. The translation indicates Flaubert delves into the bad luck trend in the two friends. The two friend’s application to successful scientific research is thwarted by a combination of bad luck, intellectual gullibility and constant encounters with all the sophistry and truisms that the History of Ideas can pitch at them. Despite all their failures, Bouvard and Pecuchet remain completely sympathetic characters, completely wrapped with a comic heroism that converts their search for truth into a grueling war against the community. Consequently, Flaubert's ill fated copy clerks are the first heroes or even anti-heroes - of society’s modernism. The story of Bouvard and Pecuchet focuses on the clash between theory and practice. The emphasis of the story borders on political issues (Colebrook ;308). The story centers on the life of the Paris-based copy clerks. The copy clerks are Francois Denys Bartholomee and Juste Romain Cyrille Pecuchet. They belong to the same age group. They have similar temperaments. They accidentally meet during one summer day in 1838 near the canal Saint Martin. They immediately created a strong bond, typical of a symbiotic and very strong mutually beneficial friendship. After Bouvard is able to generate a huge fortune in terms of money, the two friends decided to move to the more politically and scientifically challenging community. The two friends preferred the quiet of the countryside. Specifically, the two move to a 380,000 square meter land near the vicinity of Chavignolles. Community is strategically located in Normandy. The two focus their time challenging and testing the veracity of the intellectual concepts of their time period. They focus their precious time and energy floundering almost every area of scientific, political, and other concepts. Joan Always (31) insists “Because the development of a politically significant class consciousness on the part of the proletariat was regarded as impossible, the connection between the political orientation of action and the hope for a better world was severed, and consequently, the political role of theory was given only negative formulation.” The story of the two friends complies with Horkheimer and Adorno's scrutiny of the history and analysis of contemporary conditions, the dilemma created by Lukacs, when he confirmed the proletariat's revolutionary acts and refused its capability to implement this part, stopped to be the focus. The research of the proletariat had been set into motion complete and the topic of revolutionary agency was eliminated by Horkheimer and Adorno's serious removal of the vision of history as the path to deliverance. There are no sure paths to deliverance to be found in the Dialectic, there are rare footpaths. The picture of a world, and arguments concerning agents and activities which can precipitate to the world, has a high probability of not appearing. Realizing that the world is against the two friends, the two enthusiastically science-minded friends decide to return to their old life. Their old life is filled with job responsibilities as copy clerks. As copy clerks, the two copied anything, including tobacco packets, old newspapers, torn up books, posters, erotic books. As copy clerks, the two painstakingly copied bad spelling, fairy tales, grandmothers’ novels, and old operas. In addition, Charles Sisson (146) insists “It is possible for the political and administrative authorities in this country to act as effectively as a single power for the very reason that there is so sharp a differentiation of function between them, because, in short, there are no administrative authorities but only administrative instruments used by the political power. This differentiation is by no means to be taken for granted.” It is the least pegged in the realms which are maintaining a historical tradition of the nation’s public servants as governor, and it is exactly in the environment in the situation of such public officers where perils of their situated at the cross-aims with the political strength s most dreaded. A public officer, states that they 'confirm, if it was necessary, that the public officers’ place in the administration of the federal government is of such prime importance that a realistic diversion in political paths should be joined by a profound enhancement in the members of the government unit. It is normal that, during certain times, the governing politician must be alarmed about what the government officials may get up to. Even though the probable dichotomy of the political and administrative powers, generating from the not so perfect differentiation of their functions, generates most reasons for anxiety in times of brutal change, the nervousness is not detained to such periods and is endemic in the political system. The story of the two friends shows that some members of society refuse to comply with government policies, just like the two copy clerks. This is what freedom and liberty is all about. Any person is free to do whatever he or she wants provided they do not break any of the political laws of the nation, United States. The two friends decide to stop their current penchant to disprove current political, social, and scientific research. Consequently, the two decide to make a 360 degree turnaround by constructing a desk on which to write. The desk has two seats fitted to the seating requirements of the two close friends. In terms of their scientific research progress, the two are classified as certified failures. Their researches lack real achievement. Tension seeps into the two friends’ scrutinizing researches. Likewise, Frank Mintz (163) mentions that “The endurance of Liberty Lobby suggested a pattern of discontent in America that grew concomitantly with the breakdown of the affluent postwar society in the 1960s. A comparative sense of unity that the United States had attained during the Eisenhower presidency broke apart amidst instability, bitterness, and cynicism.” The news headlines of the nation’s newspaper as well as television film have shown the many faces of the political turbulence of the time period, but the pronouncements of Liberty Lobby intelligentsia offer hints to an inner, psychic disorder that needs a full exposure. The political unit enabled the Lobby to maintain a grass roots political constituency in spite of the political feuds and consequently political counterattacks. The residents of the community retaliate to the opposing political, scientific, and social concepts of the two friends by driving the two copy clerks outside of the community. Further, their failure is grounded on the confusion of signs and symbols as reality, semiotics. The people sometimes misinterpret the word Semiotics focuses on the semantics. Semiotic’s Semantics spect focuses on the study of the effect of signs and the objects that the signs represent. Likewise, Semiotic’s Syntactics centers on the effect of the signs and the related formal structures (17). Further, Semiotic’s Pragmatics zeroes in on the effect of the political, social, and other signs on the affected people. Semiotics’ major study area is on the use of language for communication by the government to its constituents and the people’s complaints, suggestions, and recommendations to the government. People generate different interpretations of any government action or non-action, under the concept of Semiotics, just like the two friends. The Bouvard and Pecuchet is a classic literary masterpiece of the human aspiration: the age-old goal to better one’s current accomplishments to achieve fulfillment, and to find the elusive happy state. Flaubert included in his masterpiece, Bouvard and Pecuchet, observed that the products of time and culture were grounded on the increasing belief of beneficence of the scientific and political progress and the imperatives of political conformity. In addition, Flaubert’s contradictors argued to come to terms with society’s struggle to accept new scientific knowledge by implementing a huge database of modern pursuits, in the name of science. The people of Flaubert’s time focused on filling their hunger for education and recognition. The people set out to understand more scientific concepts at an impossibly accelerated rhythm. Consequently, the people’s scientific research bravely brings them to foreign countries to acquire new and advance knowledge in chemistry, agriculture, archeology, history, medicine, politics, love, aesthetics, and other areas. The literary masterpiece, Bouvard and Pecuchet, display’s Flaubert’s hatred stupidity and the rigid politically -inspired bourgeois concepts. The concepts, mentalities, include cliches and biases that the community strictly adheres. The author reiterates that the Bouvard and Pecuche focuses on the many forms of political, social, and other stupidity concerns. The stupidity includes the individuals’ hopeless chase of the elusive instant knowledge to the moronic and continually changing government policies. In addition, Flaubert’s refusal to enter into a serious love life is shown in the Bouvard and Pecuchet’s story where Bouvard fumbles and makes desultory tries to win the love of Madame Bordin. The story depicts Flaubert’s real life love interest, Louise Colet. The story of the two independent friends, Bouvard and Pecuchet, shows Flaubert’s own friendship with Alfred Le Poittevin or Louse Bouilhet. In addition, Bouvard and Pecuchet never quit from their original job as copy clerks. The two friends absorbed and regurgitated all new scientific, political, social and other trends and historical disciplines along their path of scientific, social, and political discovery. Further, Daniel Chandler (17) emphasizes “We seem as a species to be driven by a desire to make meanings: above all, we are surely homo significance- meaning-makers. Distinctively, we make meanings through our creation and interpretation of 'signs'. Indeed, according to Peirce, 'we think only in signs.” The signs can include several types. The types include the form of words, images, sounds, odors, flavors, acts or objects, but such objects have no intrinsic meaning and become signs only when we invest them with meaning. Nothing is indicative of a sign except when unless it is interpreted as a sign, declares Peirce. Anything can be a sign as long as someone interprets it as 'signifying' something - referring to or standing for something other than itself. We interpret things as signs largely unconsciously by relating them to familiar systems of conventions. The two friends have the desire to disprove current political, social, and other theories. Further, Daniel Chandler (55) insists “While semiotics is often encountered in the form of textual analysis, it also involves philosophical theorizing on the role of signs in the construction of reality. Semiotics involves studying representations and the processes involved in representational practices and semioticians, 'reality' always involves representation”. In addition, semioticians as a defining feature of the signs, shows that they are treated by their users as 'standing for' or representing other things. The government’s every action or inaction communicates different signs to different residents of the Jonathan Swift's satirical account of the fictional academicians of Lagado outlined their proposal to abolish words altogether, and to carry around bundles of objects whenever they wanted to communicate. This highlights problems with the simplistic notion of signs being direct substitutes for physical things in the world around United States (Chandler 55). Also, Daniel Chandler (79) theorizes “Semiotics is probably best known as an approach to textual analysis, and in this form it is characterized by a concern with structural analysis. Structural analysis focuses on the structural relations which are functional in the signifying system during a particular moment in history.” It involves identifying the constituent units in a semiotic system (such as a text or socio-cultural practice) and the structural relationships between them (oppositions, correlations and logical relations). This is not an empty exercise since 'relations are important for what they can explain: meaningful contrasts and permitted or forbidden combinations. Likewise, the two friends’ researches focus on the postmodernism. Likewise, Janell Watson (83) insists “19th century France the multiplication of material things coincides with what is perceived to be an explosion of knowledge, two events which come together in the new public museums which also proliferate during this period. Writing within and against this context, Flaubert accords a central place to the museum episode in his novel Bouvard and Pecuchet, left unfinished at the time of his death in 1880. Evidently, Joseph Hamburger (149) insists “Mill’s celebration of individuality is passionate and compelling. He presents a picture of a free-spirited, independent person with a distinctive personality who lives in accordance with original and worthy ideas and values. The person with individuality is spontaneous, original, and makes choices in accordance with strong desires that reflect individual character rather than with what is fashionable or customary. Such a person, moreover, is courageous and thus not afraid to defy society.” Mill insists that such qualities of a person’s individuality were very valuable. He states that personal spontaneity had “intrinsic worth” and merits “regard on its own account”. Mill also debated that individuality permitted for the greatest enhancement of human qualities—“it brings human beings themselves nearer to the best thing they can be”. Human nature, in terms of political analysis, was more similar to a tree when compared to a machine. Consequently, it should grow and develop on all allowable frontiers, in terms of the trend of the inward forces which classifies it a living thing. Mill approved of individuality, even though, less for its intrinsic value when compared to its usefulness in aiding in the bringing about political ends. The few statements indicate it has inherent values that are greatly outnumbered by several literary references emphasizing its instrumental value. Persons with individuality contributed their own little share to improve society. They were accomplishing by criticizing and undermining the current political makeup existing which had been in the metamorphosis stage and by advancing the emergence of a new political society. The two friends focus on implementing their own version of moral reform on society, to the disgruntlement of the opposing community residents. The novel's (anti-) heroes, two unmarried Parisian copy clerks, retire to the country on an unexpected inheritance, where they undertake a seemingly endless series of studies and experiments from aboriculture to literature, politics, sociology, theology and others. The two petty-bourgeois hobbyists had no formal scientific, political, social and other trainings in researches undertaken, and must rely on their own rather confused readings of scholarly treatises and how-to manuals, which often contradict each other. The long series of amateurish study and scientific experimentation, which provides the only real plot structure for this unusual novel, is recounted (in the third person) in great detail, always following the same pattern: each new enterprise is begun with enthusiasm, soon followed by failure, frustration, and dejection, until the haphazard discovery of a new project, which sets the whole cycle going again. The effect is comic, though repetitious. At one point during the course of these successive scholarly activities the hobbyists take up archaeology, an interest inspired by the discovery of an antique chest which, in the serial fashion characteristic of the novel, leads them to “le gout des bibelots” and then “l'amour du moyen age.” They then turn most of the ground floor of their home into a museum. The museum is desgined as domestic context of the living room space in which it is set. It is significant that at certain points Flaubert does use the term “bibelot” to describe the artifacts in the museum collection. In addition, Harold Bloom states “Over the past twenty-odd years, semiotics has established itself as a powerful, rigorous and at times elegant technique for the close reading of literary texts. Until recently, of course, the semiotic undertaking tended to remain within the text itself, leaving the issue of the relation between literature and society to more traditional kinds of criticism—whether of the liberal or Marxist kind (219).” During the last many years, semiotics started to make several tentative moves towards coming to grips with some of the social contextuality of literature. Fredric Jameson's The Political Unconscious is the most popular and fruitful evidence of this. However, there was a movement from inside the semiotics movement to try to explain a text's social presence through the scrutiny of the concept of "intertextuality." In addition, Lennard Davis (67) states “one of the most prominent contemporary literary semioticians is Michael Riffaterre, whose recent work, which seeks to define "intertextuality" in a methodologically fruitful way, illustrates this change in emphasis. Davis states Flaubert's last and unfinished novel, Bouvard and Pecuchet, centers on the story of the two friends as a clear forerunner of postmodernism which incorporates the political, social and other ingredients of French society during Flaubert’s time period. The postmodern aspect of the literary masterpiece shows that it makes fun of all tries to comprehend the world’s political, social, and other areas in any realistic manner, especially evident in the Bouvard and Pecuchet story. In one aspect "Bouvard and Pecuchet" creates huge political, social, and other triumphs. Flaubert classified the book as an encyclopedia of modern stupidity. Further, Kate Rees (271) states that “Flaubert's relationship to the nineteenth-century belief in progress. It focuses on his last, uncompleted novel, Bouvard et Pecuchet (1880). In addition, political progress is discussed as a historical force of momentum which can be analysed through the metaphor of the journey (271).” The position is that Flaubert's literary masterpieces give a complicated response to the flux of historical politics-inspired data and is found in Bouvard et Pecuchet using the process of structural dualism shown by the characters' differences, and using the hindrance –tainted political, social, and other encounters they undertake as they start on their goal to gain new knowledge. Virgil Nemoianu's research gives a framework for the dynamics of Flaubert's literary masterpieces. The opposing political, social, and other influences can be observed in Flaubert's novel, Bouvard and Pecuchet and scrutinized in relation to two of the countless processes implemented by the Bouvard and Pecuchet novel: their initial politically –inspired transfer from Paris to the countryside, and a later trip to Fecamp focused on political influence on geology research. Based on the above discussion, Flaubert’s Bouvard and Pecuchet story indicates how life is at the time of Flaubert’s writing of the story of the scientific prowess of two friends. The two friends’ unsuccessfully hopped from one research to another, including researches on the political and other aspects of the lives of the Flaubert’s time period. The two friend’s contradictory impression of their community’s political and other concepts runs counter to the community’s scientific, social, scientific and other established concepts, creating animosity and alienation between the two friends and the exile-bent community. Indeed, the research paper shows the two friends have the freedom to conform to society’s political rules but preferred to go the opposite way in Gustave Flaubert’s Bouvard and Pecuchet masterpiece. Works Cited Alway, Joan. Critical Theory and Political Possibilities. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1995. Print. Bloom, Harold. Gustave Flaubert. New York: Chelsea House Press, 1989. Print. Chandler, Daniel. Semiotics: The Basics. New York: Routledge Press, 2002. Print. Colebrook, Claire. Irony in the Work of Philosophy. Lincoln: Nebraska Press, 2002. Print. Flaubert, Gustave, 2005. Bouchard and Pecuchet, retrieved April 3, 2012, from http://books.google.com.ph/books?id=1XaM5fwXjV4C&pg=PT4&dq=%22Bouvard+and+Pecuchet%22+by+Gustave+Flaubert+Mark+Polizzotti&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Df97T8L0H6OWiQfswPzACQ&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%22Bouvard%20and%20Pecuchet%22%20by%20Gustave%20Flaubert%20Mark%20Polizzotti&f=false Hamburger, Joseph. John Stuart Mill on Liberty and Control. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. Print. Hirschmann, Nancy. Gender, Class and Freedom in Modern Political Theory. Princeton: J Wiley & Sons Press, 2008. Print. Mintz, Frank. The Liberty Lobby and the American Right. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1985. Print. Sisson, Charles. Essays on Liberty and Government. New York: Carcanet Press, 1992. Print. Rees, Kate. "Progressing in Flaubert's Bovard Et Pecuchet." French Studies 63.3 (2009): 271. Print. Smart, Alastair. "And for Later... The Best Time with your Feet up The Book Bouvard and Pecuchet." The Sunday Telegraph (2008): 39. Print. Watson, Janell. Literature and Material Culture from Balzac to Proust. New York: University Press, 1999. Print. Read More