Trials of Curiosity: Flaubert’s La Tentation de saint Antoine and Bouvard et Pécuchet
Abstract Flaubert regarded his last two novels, La Tentation de saint Antoine and the unfinished Bouvard et Pécuchet, as companion pieces. For all their obvious differences in terms of setting and generic models, certain similarities have struck readers, not least the way in which both works depart from the parameters of the writer’s influential poetics. Among the most prominent similarities are an unmistakable and at times tiresome repetitiveness and the overwhelming encyclopedic scope of the scientific knowledge and disciplines informing both works. The essay charts the different generic lineages that make for the difficulty in situating Flaubert’s late work to then discuss a theme that is often overlooked: curiositas. Hans Blumenberg’s magisterial history of curiosity, Der Prozeß der theoretischen Neugierde, allows us to account for the peculiar mix of science and religion, gnostic and scientific curiosity, in La Tentation, while the philosopher’s short study Das Lachen der Thrakerin, an extension of the curiosity book, casts a new light on the ambivalent status of libido sciendi in Bouvard et Pécuchet.