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Part of the book: Sartre's Theory of Literature

Christina Howells

MHRA Texts and Dissertations 14

Modern Humanities Research Association

ModernFrenchPhilosophyopen

Abstract.  L'Idiot de la famille is arguably the most maligned, the most admired, and the least read of all Sartre's works. It is a work of dual purpose: a study of methodology as much as a study of Flaubert. Sartre's method is once again the progressive-regressive, synthetico-analytic approach already discussed in the previous chapter, but applied here with a rigour and thoroughness unmatched even by Saint Genet. Not only does Sartre interrogate the final years of Flaubert's life to illumine his childhood choices and attitudes, but the regressive analysis takes him back to Flaubert as a suckling, and he even regrets having no knowledge of the foetus's life in the uterus.

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