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A review by joannaautumn
Bouvard and Pecuchet by Gustave Flaubert
3.0
Nobody:
Flaubert: *read over 1000 books so he could make the ultimate social satire*
I don't think there was a topic this man didn't touch upon in this book, review to come.
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➜A story of two retired copy-clerks (François Denys Bartholomée) Bouvard and (Juste Romain Cyrille) Pécuchet who move to the countryside and search for “food for thought” or “mind stimulations” basically, they see knowledge as a way to fill in their time and always want the best results out of it without really putting in the effort to learn the object of their study.
This was a topic that Flaubert spoke about before in brief in both Madame Bovary and Sentimental education – about how the newspaper’s idea of democratization of knowledge; that, on one hand, doesn’t provide enough information about the topics and is a matter shaped by the journalists(aka. the knowledge isn’t as trustworthy as the one received in academic books) and on the other hand it makes people feel entitled thinking they have the knowledge on the subject.
In this novel, the satire is precisely on the level of investment Bouvard and Pecuchet show towards acquiring knowledge while also exposing the weakness of multiple branches of knowledge and how some of their components simply do not make sense to the common men.
➜Because of this Bouvard and Pechuchet fail in everything they try from agriculture, gardening, chemistry, medicine, biology, archeology, architecture, history, literature, to politics, theology, philosophy, and education. Resulting in the final draft of the ending where they abandon all of their “knowledge” and decide to make a desk where they would write a dictionary of received ideas filled with sarcastic definitions of the terms inside.
In short, the novel raises the question of what is knowledge, what is actually considered worth knowing, and who makes the learning criteria?
Written in an episodic structure with Flaubert’s attention to language parallels his skill in Sentimental education, however, it requires a careful, focused reader with no prejudice to fully enjoy this work.
Flaubert: *read over 1000 books so he could make the ultimate social satire*
I don't think there was a topic this man didn't touch upon in this book, review to come.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Abstraction can provide stumbling blocks for people of strange intelligence.”
➜A story of two retired copy-clerks (François Denys Bartholomée) Bouvard and (Juste Romain Cyrille) Pécuchet who move to the countryside and search for “food for thought” or “mind stimulations” basically, they see knowledge as a way to fill in their time and always want the best results out of it without really putting in the effort to learn the object of their study.
This was a topic that Flaubert spoke about before in brief in both Madame Bovary and Sentimental education – about how the newspaper’s idea of democratization of knowledge; that, on one hand, doesn’t provide enough information about the topics and is a matter shaped by the journalists(aka. the knowledge isn’t as trustworthy as the one received in academic books) and on the other hand it makes people feel entitled thinking they have the knowledge on the subject.
In this novel, the satire is precisely on the level of investment Bouvard and Pecuchet show towards acquiring knowledge while also exposing the weakness of multiple branches of knowledge and how some of their components simply do not make sense to the common men.
➜Because of this Bouvard and Pechuchet fail in everything they try from agriculture, gardening, chemistry, medicine, biology, archeology, architecture, history, literature, to politics, theology, philosophy, and education. Resulting in the final draft of the ending where they abandon all of their “knowledge” and decide to make a desk where they would write a dictionary of received ideas filled with sarcastic definitions of the terms inside.
In short, the novel raises the question of what is knowledge, what is actually considered worth knowing, and who makes the learning criteria?
Written in an episodic structure with Flaubert’s attention to language parallels his skill in Sentimental education, however, it requires a careful, focused reader with no prejudice to fully enjoy this work.