The Politics of Description:Gyorgy Lukacs and Jacques Rancière on Madame Bovary
Flaubert's renowned work Madame Bovary serves as a significant bridge between realism and modernism literature,characterized by its frequent use of description that even influences the narrative process.Lukacs criticized Flaubert and naturalism for over-reliance on description,arguing that it violated Aristotle's"action poetics"and disrupted the organic nature of the work.Politically,the abundance of description reflected the bourgeoisie's indifference to real struggles and a pessimistic outlook towards the future.From a contemporary radical political perspective,Rancière admired Madame Bovary's descriptive style as embodying an equal aesthetic democracy that rebelled against Aristotle's imitation/representation aesthetics with implied hierarchy,disturbed existing partition of the sensible,and led to a new politics of difference.As part of Western Marxism thought tradition,Rancière and Lukacs's views were in contention with each other;comparing them can help us better understand their thoughts as well as Flaubert's creation.The different imitative perspectives implied by them can also deepen our understanding of Western aesthetics and literature.
NETL
NSTL
万方数据
维普
