SOURCE: Cronk, Nicholas. “Reading ‘Un Coeur Simple’: The Pleasure of the Intertext.” Nineteenth-Century French Studies 24, nos. 1-2 (fall‐winter 1995-96): 154-61.

In the following essay, Cronk explores the function of the allusions associated with the names of the children, Paul and Virginie, in Flaubert's tale “Un Coeur simple.”

So, they took the curator to where they kept the reserve collection. You want a parrot? they said. Then we go to the section of the birds. They opened the door, and they saw in front of them … fifty parrots. “Une cinquantaine de perroquets!”

———Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot

Flaubert's use of Paul et Virginie as an element in the structure of “Un Cœur simple” is well known. The names of Mme Aubain's children, Paul and Virginie, are explicit pointers to a wide range of implicit allusions: the families in both works live in isolation and are dominated by two...