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 follow this thread
Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes 1605–1615
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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1605–1615

Don Quixote

Miguel de Cervantes

Spanish Golden Age. Spain. written in Spanish.

Novel of a country gentleman driven mad by chivalric romances who sets out as a knight errant with his squire Sancho Panza.

What it handed down

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

Thematic kinship, well documented.

In a letter to Louise Colet of 1852 Flaubert said he found all his origins in Don Quixote, a book he knew by heart before he could read. Frédéric, like Quixote, lives through borrowed literary images and sees them repeatedly fail against the world; the novel is a quixotic story stripped of adventure.

To Madame Bovary

Thematic kinship, well documented.

Emma Bovary's ruin by novel-reading is a feminine, provincial reworking of Quixote's madness from chivalric romances. Critics have long called Emma a 'female Quixote', and Flaubert's stated debt to Cervantes dates from these years of composition.

To Waverley

Thematic kinship, probable.

Edward Waverley's head is filled with romances from undisciplined reading, and his entry into the Jacobite rising is partly a romantic delusion. Scott frames this as a gentler version of Quixote's mistaking of fiction for life.

Where it came from

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1516

Orlando Furioso

Ludovico Ariosto

Italian Renaissance. Ferrara, Italy. written in Italian.

Romance epic in ottava rima of Charlemagne's paladins, centred on Orlando's madness for love of Angelica.

What it handed down

To Don Quixote (1605–1615)

Direct source, well documented.

Quixote debates whether to imitate the mad rage of Ariosto's Orlando or the melancholy of Amadis, and the Furioso is discussed during the library scrutiny. Cervantes took both the madness-from-love motif and Ariosto's ironic narrative voice.

Where it came from

Orlando Innamorato, Matteo Maria Boiardo 1483 follow this thread
The Aeneid, Virgil c. 29–19 BCE

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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 (1516)

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

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

Don Quixote

What it handed down

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

To Madame Bovary

To Waverley

Where it came from

Orlando Furioso

What it handed down

To Don Quixote (1605–1615)

Where it came from

The Aeneid

What it handed down

To Orlando Furioso (1516)

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

To Confessions

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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