Contemporary realism is still stubbornly Flaubertian, because we still need the peculiar intimate power of art, the power that sends strange shivers all through the majestically corpulent mass of the body politic.

NOTES

1. G. Flaubert, Correspondance, vol. i, ed. J. Bruneau (Paris: Galli-mard, 1973), p. 378.

2.Ibid., vol. 3 (1991), p. 536.

3. Ibid., pp. 16–17.

4. Ibid., vol. 1 (1973), p. 712.

5. Ibid., p. 120.

6. Ibid., vol. 2. (1980), p. 218.

7. J. Bruneau, Les Débuts littéraires de Gustave Flaubert (Paris: Armand Colin, 1962), p. 381, n. 96.

8. Flaubert, Correspondance, vol. 2 (1980), p. 285.

9. Ibid., vol. 3 (1991), p. 59.

10. Ibid., vol. 2 (1980), p. 290.

11. Ibid., vol. 3 (1991), p. 572.

12. M. Du Camp, Souvenirs littéraires (Paris: Hachette, 1882), vol. 1, p. 248.

13. Flaubert, Correspondance, vol. 4 (1998), p.