Paper Topic:

Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert

Madame Bovary , by Gustave Flaubert

[Name]

[Instructor]

[Course]

[Date]

Research Proposal

The following study is a revisitation of classic novel with a focus on protagonist , relying on the premise that the main emotions generated by story are organized around fictional personae . The critical approach taken requires clarification in terms of its fundamental assumptions since it goes somewhat against the grain of current mainstream criticism . A character is , for this study , the representation of a conceptualized human being , not a purely textual structure embodying thematic motifs

While

the character still defined as a structural element , instead of the autonomous (and thus a priori ) entity conceived by the humanistic tradition , at this point , definition nevertheless foregrounds a distinction between human and non-human agency . Furthermore , study acknowledge the reader 's intervention in the construction of character not only , by way of the cumulative act of memorizing textual information , but also by way of the inferences and expectations that derive from both the text itself and the reader 's repertoire of lived and imagined experiences

This scrutiny minimizes the importance of the emotions inspired in the reader by the various characters , which this study sees as a fundamental way of gaining reader 's interest , attention and active participation in the story being told . Thus tendency to discount the importance of characters in narrative fiction seems to be the result of two factors both highly significant : first , the undermining of emotions , seen as antithetical to reason second , an aesthetic attitude that is deeply anti-mimetic

Study 's position is that the reader 's response to fiction necessarily contains an emotional element . This is especially true when texts engage us in recognizing and judging certain values and forms of behavior Furthermore , this emotional component is necessarily embedded in a specific cultural context , which is as much a part of the textual construction of the character as a portion of the reader 's own repertoire . In countering the argument that narrative representations and their individual characters do not reflect the real but only confer and meaning on an endlessly chaotic universe , there is an implicit narrative structure both in individual and social human existence

To suggest that at certain moments artists took it upon themselves to imitate aspects of an historically contingent reality according to no less contingent perspectives is not , in any way whatsoever , to ignore the conventionality of art . Similarly , an anthropomorphic concept of character does not imply , that one mistakes fiction for life , as long as the fictional nature of the character is not put in question , and as long as its undeniable mimetic quality is not equated with the concept of a universal and essentially unchangeable reality

Before closing these explanations we need to mention other significant elements related to the kind of literary analysis will be proposing First , this want to emphasize the tendency in many areas of study to reevaluate emotions , recognizing in them a cognitive component which previously has not been given much attention . Then , this study would like...

19 pages

63.0 KB

Free sing-up