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Salammbô (novel) by Gustave Flaubert.
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THE FEAST
It was at Megara, a suburb of Carthage, in the gardens
of Hamilcar. The soldiers whom he had commanded
in Sicily were having a great feast to celebrate the
anniversary of the battle of...
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The French novelist Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) was one of the most important forces in creating the modern novel as a conscious art form and in launching, much against his will, the realistic school...
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The enduring literary fame of Gustave Flaubert was established all at one go, in the course of a famous trial that simultaneously brought him success and scandal. In 1857, when Madame Bovary (transla...
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In the following essay, Brombert describes the Flaubertian obsessions that inform Salammbô with nihilism and sacrilege—identifying concepts of immobility, sadism, violence, ennui, and th...
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In the following essay, Dugan analyzes the style, imagery, symbolism, and form of Salammbô, concentrating on the novel's rendering of aesthetic immobility.
Since the publication of Salam...
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In the following essay, Porter claims that Salammbô is not a well-structured novel, but rather, is at best a manifesto of aestheticism.
From Baudelaire down through Maupassant, Turgeniev, Henry...
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In the following essay, Jay maintains that Salammbô, employs little of the typical mechanics of historical fiction and that it presents exoticism and ritual action instead of theme, motivation,...
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In the following excerpt, first published in 1974, Culler asserts that bewilderment is experienced by both the characters in the unreal setting of Carthage and the readers of the novel itself. The cri...
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In the following essay, Brady concentrates on the archetypal structure of Salammbô, including its eroticized imagery and suggestions of alchemical transformation.
One of the most influential mo...
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In the following essay, Godfrey examines the lush imagery and the central symbolic role of textiles in Salammbô, particularly addressing Flaubert's treatment of the veil of Tanit.
It is ...
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In the following essay, Berrong asserts that Flaubert depicted a myth of the creation of language in his Salammbô.
Of all the French novelists of the second half of the nineteenth century, cert...
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In the following essay, Mossman assesses Salammbô as an iconoclastic juxtaposition of myth and history illuminated by a symbolic conjunction of the sacred and the feminine.
Beyond the literary ...
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In the following essay, Rice posits that not only is Flaubert's view of modern life as a reflection of history evident in Salammbô, but the novel contains several internal relationships ...
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In the following essay, Busst studies symmetry and parallelism in the four meetings between Salammbô and Mâtho, within the context of the novel's overall structural opposition of ...
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In the following essay, Danaher presents an analysis of Salammbô based upon the critical concepts of Russian Formalism, explaining Flaubert's use of focalization, the sadistic motif, and...
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In the following essay, Barnett considers Flaubert's problematic concern with sacrilege in Salammbô in terms of the paradoxical figuration of Mâtho and Salammbô as the Cart...
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In the following essay, Orr focuses on costume in Salammbô to emphasize Salammbô's feminine challenge to the power of male authority.
Flaubert's eponymous heroine has attra...
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In the following essay, Kropp emphasizes how Carthaginian leaders manipulate the Barbarians by exploiting their naïve “belief in the transparency of language.”
In 1862, following ...
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In the following excerpt, Durr dissects the critical consensus regarding Salammbô, contending that most readings of the work are flawed. Durr also illustrates the ways in which Flaubert subtly ...
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Salammbo
Gustave Flaubert
Gustave Flaubert
Critical Essay by Victor Brombert
