Passion, Counter-Passion, Catharsis : Beckett and Flaubert on feeling nothing

In Garry Hagberg & Walter Jost, A Companion to the Philosophy of Literature. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell (2007)
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Abstract

This chapter presents Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and Samuel Beckett’s Trilogy as modern fictions with ancient-skeptical ambitions. Whether in the affective domain (Flaubert) or in the cognitive (Beckett), the aim is to help the reader achieve a position of studied neutrality—ataraxia, époché—thanks not to an a priori decision but to the mutual cancellation of opposing tendencies. Understanding Flaubert and Beckett in this way allows us, first, to enrich our sense of what “catharsis” may involve; second, to see why the apparently odious Charles, in Madame Bovary, suddenly becomes a deeply touching figure; and third, to recognize the severe limitations of empathy-based moralist theories of fiction.

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Joshua Landy
Stanford University

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References found in this work

Katharsis.Jonathan Lear - 1988 - Phronesis 33 (1):297-326.
Pity and Fear in the Rhetoric and the Poetics.Alexander Nehamas - 2015 - In David J. Furley & Alexander Nehamas, Aristotle's Rhetoric: Philosophical Essays. Princeton University Press. pp. 257-282.

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