Le transfert des notes de lecture du Dossier «Politique» dans le chapitre VI de «Bouvard et Pécuchet»: illustration d’un exemple significatif

Abstract

My research falls into a new field called genetic criticism, rooted in France since the 1970s and the 1980s and providing a fresh new perspective on literary works. In fact, its main focus is on modern literary manuscripts bearing witness to texts in their nascent stage (in statu nascendi) as well as to a work's creative process. The "dossier Politique", the political section of Bouvard et Pécuchet, the focus of my studies, contains notes - collected by writer Gustave Flaubert for chapter VI of the novel - which result from his individual research and reading through a significant variety of books (approximately one hundred) linked to political and historical issues. These notes, therefore, can be thought of as the embryo of the above mentioned chapter on political issues and the starting point of a complex creative process. As a part of my doctoral thesis work, this led me to introduce an analysis dealing with all the preparatory documentation which follows, step by step, the genesis of the chapter. For the time being, I will introduce some aspects related to my corpus and proceed by illustrating the way how notes became part of chapter VI.