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 follow this thread
Lost Illusions (Illusions perdues), Honoré de Balzac 1837–1843 follow this thread
Volupté, Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve 1834
René, François-René de Chateaubriand 1802 follow this thread

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1834

Volupté

Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve

July Monarchy. France. written in French.

Sainte-Beuve's only novel, the confession of Amaury, who loves the married Madame de Couaën and ends as a priest.

What it handed down

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

Thematic kinship, probable.

Flaubert read Volupté in his youth, and scholars of the 1845 and 1869 Éducations point to its chaste, lifelong passion of a young man for a virtuous married woman. Amaury's devotion to Madame de Couaën prefigures Frédéric's idealised, never-consummated love for Madame Arnoux.

Where it came from

Confessions, Augustine of Hippo c. 397–400
René, François-René de Chateaubriand 1802 follow this thread

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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 (1834)

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

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 follow this thread
The Book of Psalms, Anonymous c. 1000–300 BCE

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c. 1000–300 BCE

The Book of Psalms

Anonymous

Ancient Israel. Ancient Israel and Judah. written in Hebrew.

Collection of 150 Hebrew hymns, laments and prayers forming a book of the Hebrew Bible.

What it handed down

To Confessions (c. 397–400)

Structural model, well documented.

The Confessions open with a verse from the Psalms and are saturated with their language; Book Nine describes Augustine reading Psalm 4 after his conversion. The work's form as a prayer addressed to God comes from the Psalter.

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

Volupté

What it handed down

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

Where it came from

Confessions

What it handed down

To Volupté (1834)

To The Canzoniere (Rerum vulgarium fragmenta)

To The Letters of Abelard and Heloise

Where it came from

The Book of Psalms

What it handed down

To Confessions (c. 397–400)

Where it came from

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