Saint/Oedipus: Psychocritical Approaches to Flaubert's Art

A few years before his death, Gustave Flaubert finally returned to the adaptation of a legend that had fascinated him since adolescence. The result was The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaler, one of his celebrated Three Tales. According to tradition, Julian was a nobleman who turned to a life of self-denial after unwittingly fulfilling a prophecy that he would kill his parents. In Flaubert's hands the legend takes on astonishing complexity and depth. He portrays Julian as a man bound, like Oedipus, by an inexorable fate; a man capable of great cruelty and great piety who both dreads and desires that fate.

In Saint/Oedipus, three practitioners of psychocriticism take a close look at Flaubert's powerful and problematic story. Focusing on recurrent patterns of the text, their essays not only shed light on the work itself but constitute an expert introduction to the methods of psychoanalytic criticism. Each contributor approaches The Legend of Saint Julian from a different perspective, drawing on the systems of Freud, Jung, Sartre, and the Chicago school of psychoanalysis. The book includes William Berg's translation of an essay on Saint Julian by Sartre—drawn from his biography of Flaubert, L'Idiot de la famille—which offers compelling insights into the psychological makeup of Flaubert. Two noteworthy features of the book are a fluent and faithful new translation of Saint Julian by Michel Grimaud, and a comprehensive reader's guide to the literature treating psychoanalytic theory and its application to literary texts.