The lineage of A Sentimental Education (L'Éducation sentimentale)

1869

A Sentimental Education (L'Éducation sentimentale)

Gustave Flaubert

Second Empire. France. written in French.

Flaubert's 1869 novel follows Frédéric Moreau from 1840 through the 1848 Revolution and the coup of 1851, as his lifelong unconsummated love for Madame Arnoux and his drifting ambitions come to nothing. It turns the novel of a young man's education into a study of illusion, inertia and failure.

Where it came from

Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert 1857
Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes 1605–1615 follow this thread
Lost Illusions (Illusions perdues), Honoré de Balzac 1837–1843 follow this thread
Volupté, Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve 1834 follow this thread
René, François-René de Chateaubriand 1802 follow this thread

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1857

Madame Bovary

Gustave Flaubert

Second Empire. France. written in French.

Flaubert's first published novel, about a provincial doctor's wife whose romantic reading leads her into adultery, debt and suicide.

What it handed down

To A Sentimental Education (L'Éducation sentimentale) (1869)

Stylistic influence, well documented.

Flaubert carried over the method he forged in Madame Bovary: free indirect style, impersonal narration, and a protagonist whose desires are shaped by romantic clichés. Frédéric is in many ways a male counterpart to Emma, and the Fontainebleau and ballroom scenes reuse the earlier novel's technique of setting private reverie against indifferent reality.

Where it came from

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1788

Paul and Virginia (Paul et Virginie)

Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre

Ancien Régime. France. written in French.

Sentimental pastoral of two children raised in innocence on Mauritius whose love ends in Virginia's drowning.

What it handed down

To Madame Bovary (1857)

Direct source, well documented.

In Part One, chapter six, Emma's convent reading begins with Paul and Virginia, and she dreams of its bamboo hut and faithful dog. Flaubert uses the book as a named source of the sentimental images that will mislead her.

Where it came from

Daphnis and Chloe, Longus c. 2nd–3rd century CE follow this thread
Julie, or the New Heloise, Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1761

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1761

Julie, or the New Heloise

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Enlightenment. France and Switzerland. written in French.

Epistolary novel of the love between the tutor Saint-Preux and his pupil Julie, who marries another man.

What it handed down

To Paul and Virginia (Paul et Virginie) (1788)

Thematic kinship, probable.

Bernardin was a friend and disciple of Rousseau in the 1770s. Paul and Virginia takes up Julie's ideals of virtuous love, natural feeling and a simple life set against corrupt society.

To The Sorrows of Young Werther

Structural model, well documented.

Goethe adopted Rousseau's epistolary form and his subject of a sensitive young man in love with a woman bound to another. Werther's raptures over nature and simple life echo Saint-Preux's letters from the Swiss mountains.

Where it came from

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c. 1132–1135

The Letters of Abelard and Heloise

Peter Abelard and Heloise

Twelfth-century Renaissance. France. written in Latin.

Abelard's autobiographical 'History of My Calamities' and the letters exchanged with Heloise, his former pupil, lover and wife.

What it handed down

To Julie, or the New Heloise (1761)

Direct source, well documented.

Rousseau's subtitle, 'the New Heloise', announces the model: a tutor who falls in love with his gifted pupil. Like Heloise, Julie is a woman of intellect whose passion is later disciplined by duty and religion.

Where it came from

Confessions, Augustine of Hippo c. 397–400

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c. 397–400

Confessions

Augustine of Hippo

Late Antiquity. Roman North Africa. written in Latin.

Augustine's autobiography addressed to God, recounting his youthful sins, sensuality and conversion.

What it handed down

To Volupté

Structural model, well documented.

Sainte-Beuve framed Volupté as a first-person confession of sensual weakness and eventual conversion, written by a man who has become a priest. The pattern of retrospective self-examination addressed toward spiritual reform is taken directly from Augustine.

To The Canzoniere (Rerum vulgarium fragmenta)

Thematic kinship, well documented.

Petrarch carried a copy of the Confessions and opened it on Mont Ventoux, as his famous letter recounts. The Canzoniere's struggle between earthly love for Laura and spiritual conversion follows the Augustinian pattern he also dramatised in his dialogue the Secretum.

To The Letters of Abelard and Heloise (c. 1132–1135)

Structural model, probable.

Abelard's 'History of My Calamities' is a first-person account of pride and sensual sin followed by punishment and religious life. Scholars read it as shaped by the Confessions, the main model for Latin spiritual autobiography that Abelard knew well.

Where it came from

The Aeneid, Virgil c. 29–19 BCE
The Book of Psalms, Anonymous c. 1000–300 BCE follow this thread

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c. 29–19 BCE

The Aeneid

Virgil

Augustan Rome. Augustan Rome. written in Latin.

Epic of the Trojan Aeneas's wanderings and his war to found the Roman people in Italy.

What it handed down

To Orlando Furioso

Direct source, well documented.

The night raid of Cloridano and Medoro reworks Virgil's Nisus and Euryalus, and the closing duel of Ruggiero and Rodomonte mirrors Aeneas and Turnus. Ariosto's dynastic praise of the Este also follows the Aeneid's celebration of Augustus.

To The History of the Kings of Britain (Historia Regum Britanniae)

Direct source, well documented.

Geoffrey makes Britain's founder Brutus a great-grandson of Aeneas, grafting British history onto the Aeneid. The exile, prophecy and founding-of-a-nation pattern follows Virgil.

To Confessions (c. 397–400)

Direct source, well documented.

In Book One Augustine recalls weeping as a schoolboy over the death of Dido while indifferent to his own spiritual death. Virgil's poem is the main literary text he quotes and against which he defines his conversion.

To Metamorphoses

Direct source, well documented.

Books Thirteen and Fourteen of the Metamorphoses retell Aeneas's journey in a compressed, sidelong way, often called Ovid's 'little Aeneid'. Ovid writes consciously in Virgil's wake while subverting his epic seriousness.

Where it came from

The Odyssey, Homer c. 700 BCE
The Iliad, Homer c. 750 BCE follow this thread

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c. 700 BCE

The Odyssey

Homer

Archaic Greece. Archaic Greece. written in Ancient Greek.

Epic of Odysseus's ten-year journey home from Troy to Ithaca.

What it handed down

To The Sorrows of Young Werther

Direct source, well documented.

In his early letters Werther calls Homer his cradle-song and reads the Odyssey in the village, comparing his simple life to the scenes with the swineherd Eumaeus. The Homeric idyll is the measure against which his later Ossianic gloom is set.

To The Aeneid (c. 29–19 BCE)

Structural model, well documented.

The first six books follow the Odyssey: a hero's wanderings by sea, a retrospective tale told at a royal banquet, and a descent to the underworld. Virgil also revisits Odyssean episodes such as the Cyclops.

To Idylls

Direct source, well documented.

Idyll 11 presents the Cyclops Polyphemus of Odyssey Book Nine as a lovesick young herdsman singing to the nymph Galatea. Theocritus regularly reworks Homeric figures into the pastoral mode.

Where it came from

This is one of the oldest surviving works in its tradition; the line ends here.

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A Sentimental Education (L'Éducation sentimentale)

Where it came from

Madame Bovary

What it handed down

To A Sentimental Education (L'Éducation sentimentale) (1869)

Where it came from

Paul and Virginia (Paul et Virginie)

What it handed down

To Madame Bovary (1857)

Where it came from

Julie, or the New Heloise

What it handed down

To Paul and Virginia (Paul et Virginie) (1788)

To The Sorrows of Young Werther

Where it came from

The Letters of Abelard and Heloise

What it handed down

To Julie, or the New Heloise (1761)

Where it came from

Confessions

What it handed down

To Volupté

To The Canzoniere (Rerum vulgarium fragmenta)

To The Letters of Abelard and Heloise (c. 1132–1135)

Where it came from

The Aeneid

What it handed down

To Orlando Furioso

To The History of the Kings of Britain (Historia Regum Britanniae)

To Confessions (c. 397–400)

To Metamorphoses

Where it came from

The Odyssey

What it handed down

To The Sorrows of Young Werther

To The Aeneid (c. 29–19 BCE)

To Idylls

Where it came from

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