Flaubert's use of real locations in Paris for his novels

Architecture and the French Novel.

- Second Empire architecture and the great department stores are a powerful visitor attraction for Paris in the twenty-first century. Many of the buildings of this period (1852–1870) are extravagant mixtures of architectural style using references to gothic but with new building technologies, for example the iron girder, which reflect France's imperial status and its material gains.  The French empire included both Vietnam and Algeria at this time, indeed the 1885 Maupassant novel, Bel Ami begins with its main character, Duroy, returning from military service in Algeria, and later in the story, land speculation in Algeria contributes to his wealth. The novel appears in English as The History of a Scoundrel in 1903 and gives a description of the Folies Bergère, a visitor attraction which had only opened in May 1869.  At the time of writing a further film adaptation of Bel Ami has been released (2012) directed by Declan Donnellan, demonstrating the continued importance of French literature as shared cultural source material in the UK and US. 

Built Heritage of Paris

This dual legacy from the nineteenth century of a burgeoning built environment and a highly politicised intelligentsia of writers provides readers and visitors today with a rich resource for literary tourism.  It is a type of literary tourism fuelled by what may be termed, narrated Place Books, for example Graham Robb's (2010) Parisians and Edward Hollis' (2009) narrative approach to the built heritage.  This genre of writing, which combines academic research with narrative literature, reminds educated readers of the literary figures of particular eras, and re-inserts their work into the city of today.  The genre, for which this research proposes a new term, Place Books, may even be the only reading a twenty-first century tourist undertakes and the serious novels from the canon described here may not actually be completely read by this type of visitor.  Thus, the fame or the importance of the books, and more particularly, their authors, mediated through the new Place Books provides sufficient impetus for literary travel.  This question of genre seems to be key in an understanding of literary tourism.  Which type of books lead visitors to undertake and enjoy literary tourism and also create leaders, imprimaturs or hero figures that visitors want to follow?  As early as 1957 Roland Barthes (Barthes 1972) had remarked upon the mythologising process that happens when a new text places famous writers in a real setting in his piece 'The Writer on Holiday' (Barthes 1972, 29-31); and Barthes was not immune to the mythical moment of being in the same place as a famous writer.  In his autobiography he declares that he once saw Nobel laureate, André Gide (1869-1951) eat a pear in the Lutétia brasserie, Paris (Barthes 1977).  Edmund White adds to this growing genre of Place Books which incite visitors to go to Paris to be in the same places as the writers who have become leaders in how to think about life (White 2008); thus this leadership role is conflated, leadership in how to live becomes leadership on where to go on holiday and how to act.

Photo details: Dr Charlie Mansfield, 17 June 2019, 9:09am, view of 9 Quai Saint-Michel, Paris 5. looking south across Seine from the Ile de la Cité

Modernism or Realism in the Novel

Harvey explores the writing of two nineteenth century French novelists as a basis for his categorisation of fiction writing into genres, positioning Zola as a realist and Flaubert as a modernist (Harvey 1991).  Harvey uses Flaubert's L'Éducation sentimentale (published in 1869 after a long gestation) to demonstrate modernism in literature by referring to the spatial mobility of the book's main character, Frédéric Moreau.

'Flaubert, for example, explores the question of representation of heterogeneity [...] Frédéric Moreau, the hero of Flaubert's L'Éducation sentimentale, moves from space to space in Paris and its suburbs, collecting experiences of quite different qualities as he goes.  What is special is the way that he glides in and out of the differentiated spaces of the city, with the same sort of ease that money and commodities change hands' (Harvey 1991, 263)

Apart from the gliding motion of the urban character, the young Moreau also seems to appear from nowhere, giving the character an effortless mobility across the city, as here, abruptly, at the opening of chapter III: 

Two months later, Frederick, having debarked [disembarked] one morning in the Rue Coq-Héron, immediately thought of paying his great visit. (Flaubert & Walter Dunne (trans) 1904).

This gliding, or being instantaneously at the scene of important action in a different part of the city, is a very different mobility, achieved thanks to improved roads and carriages but also because of the character's wealth to pay for this rapid transport.  It is a type of mobility that the tourist in the twenty-first century can experience with the Paris métro.  This enables today's visitors to plan their own tour of the spots in the novel, re-enacting the progress of the main character in a feasible time frame.   Again, Flaubert's detail, exact dates and his use of real street names provide today's tourist with a map of places to stand; even the opening lines of the novel give readers details of a river boat journey, including Quai St. Bernard, the Île St. Louis, the Cité, and Nôtre Dame, which tourists using the boats of the Bateau Mouche can re-enact today.

Street names in Literary Tourism

Today's street names permit visitors the opportunity of retracing the progress of  Frédéric on the Left Bank, where tourist restaurants and a McDonald's fill rue de la Harpe, situated as the slope down from the Sorbonne levels out near the river:

“Il allait dîner, moyennant quarante-trois sols le cachet, dans un restaurant, rue de la Harpe. Il regardait avec dédain le vieux comptoir d’acajou, les serviettes tachées, l’argenterie crasseuse et les chapeaux suspendus contre la muraille. Ceux qui l’entouraient étaient des étudiants comme lui” (Flaubert 1869).

‘He went to get a dinner for forty-three sous in a restaurant in the Rue de la Harpe. He glanced disdainfully at the old mahogany counter, the soiled napkins, the dingy silver-plate, and the hats hanging up on the wall.  Those around him were students like himself’ (Flaubert & Walter Dunne (trans) 1904).

Photo: Rue de la Harpe, Paris 75005. Photo August 2007 C. Mansfield.

By way of concluding this discussion of Flaubert's use of real locations which can be found today, a type of literary tourism can be proposed and probably does take place around Paris.  It is difficult to detect the practice of this type of literary tourism since the crowds of other categories of tourist and students fill the same spaces.  However, this type of writing, with its attention to locatable places, and especially novels in which trajectories may be traced for the characters through literary analysis does provide the material for a type of literary tourism that mobilises the visitor through the city.  It would be valuable for the DMO to seek out and consider novels of this category. 

Property and the French Novel

The built environment is a vital component of the nineteenth century French novel, especially as the fabric of the city was transformed from medieval defence into a pleasure ground for a much larger society whose modes of accumulation had shifted from feudalism to capitalism.  The buildings themselves, even those comprising comfortable apartments, were a source of earnings, in the form of rental income after Haussmannisation, rather than as workshops for cottage industries.  The Third Republic (1870-1940) gave the towns of France layers of private and public ownership and strong state regulation by public authorities, a structure which impacts on tourism destination development projects today, as Shaw & Williams explain:

‘[...] while the right to commodify a tourism asset may rest with those with the title deeds to that land, the right to regulate and control it may be vested in the public authorities on behalf of the community’ (Shaw & Williams 2004, 22).

A mass market for the novel 

Over the same period, Tony Lodge charts a state-sponsored improvement in literacy, starting with the Falloux Law of 1850 which led to 90 per cent of Parisian children attending school by 1860 through to the Ferry Laws of 1881 which 'made state primary education for all non-fee-paying, non-religious and compulsory' (Lodge 2004, 202). It was this new readership that created a mass market for the novel and the roman-feuilleton or serialised novel so that authors made a proper living from their work.  The serialised novel in France was closely tied to journalism with all of its political, commercial and entertainment functions, for example, Bel Ami, discussed earlier, appeared in parts in a daily newspaper called Gil Blas, the newspaper is named after a character in an earlier picaresque novel.

The economic and social climate favoured the production of this type of literary writing which has left a legacy of literature dealing seriously with the concerns of urban life.  This legacy provides readers today with insights into how to navigate urban life, making the novels guides for understanding the city by drawing on the notion of the flâneur from the French literary tradition (Seaton 2002). 

Title of this post: Flaubert's use of real locations in Paris for his novels

1530 words. 

If you are enjoying these long essays which develop the background study for a PhD in literary tourism, you might want to read the previous essay on French Urban Space: ‘Ross and Rimbaud’ … link below …

Part 3 Ross and Rimbaud