英文摘要 |
Madame Bovary is a timeless masterpiece because it relates a story of an universal attempt of all human race: the pursuit of happiness in the world. For the romanticism, the means to approach this attempt are identified as passion, enthusiasm, desire, the transgression of one’s limits and the thirst of perfection. These concepts, which raise all the domains of the irrational and push them to an extreme, are apt to induce human beings to commit errors. And it is exactly the case of Emma Bovary. The present article proposes to trace the fate of a romantic passion of Emma in use of the concept in Christian spirituality : the acedia. In the first part of this essay, we will recall the outlines of this word in history and will describe the major aspects relative to acedia in Flaubert’s novel : the ennui of concrete life and a longing for a heavenly somewhere else. The second part will be devoted to the analysis of Emma’s weak endeavors to resist the call of another life, and to persevere at living in her failed life. It will be the chance to demonstrate the fact that the desire does not equal the willingness. The later is far from the character of Emma, it is, on the contrary, one of the moral qualities of Charles. The third part of this work studies Mr. Bovary. If the first three parts of this study emphasize the responsibility of human beings (of the occurrence of Emma) in his success and failures in life, for the forth chapter, we adopt another point of view which seems to be shared with Flaubert, that is, the gnosis, according to which the Creator of this world is responsible for the imperfections and failures he had made. Finally, the fifth part aims to clarify the powerful irony dimension in the work of Flaubert. In fact, the irony writing is ubiquitous in Madame Bovary and it constitutes a real challenge for all the received ideas and dogmatic readings. Nevertheless, it leaves an important space to interpret. I try to demonstrate how Flaubert’s critique about the ideology of romanticism is ambiguous. Paradoxically, Flaubert’s novel could be a kind of moral statement of reasonable conduct in life. The life of Flaubert himself illustrates the moral precepts concealed in Madame Bovary: in spite of his romantic and passionate nature, unlike Emma, he never neglects his duties and knows how to take care quasi-religiously of his vocation as a writer. |