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
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

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 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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