Article,
Mémoires d'un fou/Memoirs of a Madman (parallel translation and critical edition by Timothy Unwin, 2001)
Liverpool Online Series, (2001)
Abstract
The text in which the young Flaubert evokes the searing experience of love was once described by Jean Bruneau as ‘le document le plus précieux qui nous soit parvenu de l’adolescence de Flaubert’ ‘the most valuable document from Flaubert’s youth to have passed down to us’.1 Yet the work might never have found its way into the corpus. Produced in the latter stages of 1838, the manuscript was offered to Flaubert’s friend Le Poittevin as a New Year’s gift on 4 January 1839. It was never again mentioned by Flaubert himself, nor did it figure in the list of the early writings drawn up by his niece for the Quantin Œuvres complètes of 1886. When Le Poittevin died in 1848, the manuscript passed into the hands of his son Louis. It subsequently became the property of Pierre Dauze who published the text some two decades after Flaubert’s death, first in La Revue Blanche in four instalments between December 1900 and February 1901, and then as a volume.
