After 1848: Flaubert, Huysmans and the Problem of Canon

Abstract

Among the attempts to periodize the nineteenth century, the imaginary elaboration of the year 1848 has played a main role. Hence the widespread conception of the century as a diptych, a specific “atmosphere” being recognised in each of its halves. The present work proposes to explore the terms in which this critical assumption has worked since the fin-de-siècle itself, taking into account authors such as Flaubert and Huysmans by virtue of their adscription to certain aesthetic canons. Thus, it will be necessary to superimpose a second dualism to the first one, in this case associated to the supposed traditions of “realism” and the “fantastical”, which the myths of 1848 have had to absorb or even to ignore. It is to be hoped for, then, that this critical cartography will contribute to question the historical comprehension of nineteenth-century culture, from the Francocentrism of certain periodizations to the critical verisimilitude that canonical approximations have already contributed to naturalize.