Modern Social Science Research

Gustave Flaubert has created a host of classic literary figures with distinct mad traits, such as Emma Bovary, Bouvard and Pécuchet. As different variants of “madness”, these characters break the inherent paradigm of traditional character shaping and profoundly reflect the in-depth relationship between power and individual subjects in modern society. Meanwhile, Flaubert’s unconventional thoughts and behaviors can also be regarded as a conscious and deliberate practice of madness. Sharing many ideological commonalities with Flaubert, the philosopher Michel Foucault conducted systematic research on rationality and madness. His studies have overturned people’s stereotyped perceptions of madness, redeemed madness long marginalized by the rational system, and profoundly revealed the inherent essence of social power operation. From the perspective of Foucault’s power theory, this paper reinterprets the classic images in Flaubert’s works and explores the overlooked madness metaphors embodied in the characters: power discipline leads to the dissolution of subjects’ uniqueness and the aphasia of diverse discourses; the mad behaviors of innocents break the shackles of rationality and expose the internal contradictions of the rational world; the absolute truth constructed by rationality has inherent limitations, and irrational individuals possess significant epistemological enlightenment value.

Flaubert; Madness; Power discourse