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Putting an Unfinished Novel Back into Motion: A Digital Tool to Create Possible “Second Volumes” of Bouvard et Pécuchet

  • Stéphanie Dord-Crouslé
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Labor Imperfectus
This chapter is in the book Labor Imperfectus

Abstract

As Flaubert feared, death interrupted the writing process of Bouvard etPécuchet. But does this incompletion express the structural impossibility of completing an encyclopedic novel that was to include, in its unwritten second volume, something like the totality of the world’s discourses? Without denying the interest that regards this novel as the precursor of our modernity, the Bouvard project (https://www.dossiers-flaubert.fr) wanted to consider its incompletion as essentially undergone and situational. By using digital media, it started again from the documentary materials gathered by Flaubert - these papers constitute only a work in progress that was brutally immobilized by the author’s death - and gave new life to the specific composition process of the second volume, which is based on an arrangement of textual fragments. There can then emerge a plurality of possible “second volumes”, which, far from remedying the effective incompleteness of the work, takes account of it and makes the mobility of its fragments a constitutive dimension of this unfinished work.

Abstract

As Flaubert feared, death interrupted the writing process of Bouvard etPécuchet. But does this incompletion express the structural impossibility of completing an encyclopedic novel that was to include, in its unwritten second volume, something like the totality of the world’s discourses? Without denying the interest that regards this novel as the precursor of our modernity, the Bouvard project (https://www.dossiers-flaubert.fr) wanted to consider its incompletion as essentially undergone and situational. By using digital media, it started again from the documentary materials gathered by Flaubert - these papers constitute only a work in progress that was brutally immobilized by the author’s death - and gave new life to the specific composition process of the second volume, which is based on an arrangement of textual fragments. There can then emerge a plurality of possible “second volumes”, which, far from remedying the effective incompleteness of the work, takes account of it and makes the mobility of its fragments a constitutive dimension of this unfinished work.

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Preface V
  3. Contents VII
  4. List of Figures XI
  5. Introduction 1
  6. Part I: Facing Unfinishedness
  7. From the Authorial to the Editorial tour de force: How to Read Callimachus’ Aetia and Hecale 21
  8. How to Walk Along a Pioneer’s Fragmentary Track: Theophrastus’ Meteorological Studies 41
  9. Fragments of Roman Sexuality in Petronius’ Satyricon 59
  10. Part II: Questioning (In)Completeness
  11. The “Alexandrian End” of the Odyssey 89
  12. Reconsidering Closure in Ovid’s Fasti 115
  13. Statius’ Achilleid: How to Break off a carmen perpetuum 127
  14. Literatura Incompleta: Borges’ Antiquity between World and Universe 143
  15. Part III: Constitutive Unfinishedness
  16. Sed redeo ad formulam (Off. 3.20): Completeness and Imperfection in Cicero’s De officiis 165
  17. Relativizing Unfinishedness: Lucretian Textuality and Epicurean Therapy 189
  18. The Fragment as a Form: A Reading of Fragments d’un discours amoureux by Barthes 211
  19. Arrhythmic Historiography, Lost Letters and Broken Meanings: Fulgentius’s De aetatibus mundi et hominis 225
  20. “This City Will Always Pursue You”: The Impossible End of Rutilius Namatianus’ Return 241
  21. Part IV: Reading Unfinishedness
  22. Finishing Iphigenia in Aulis 261
  23. Seneca’s Phoenissae: In Search of an Ending 275
  24. How to Read Hyginus’ Fabulae? Theories and Practices 289
  25. The Rest was not Perfected: Platonic Endings and their Modern Echoes 311
  26. War as a Permanent Civil War: The “Unfinished” History in Pasolini’s Petrolio 331
  27. Part V: Searching for Completion
  28. The Missing Conclusion to Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica 353
  29. Speaking Silences: The Incompleteness of Tacitus’ Annals and Gustav Freytag’s Die verlorene Handschrift 383
  30. Putting an Unfinished Novel Back into Motion: A Digital Tool to Create Possible “Second Volumes” of Bouvard et Pécuchet 405
  31. List of Contributors 419
  32. General Index 423
  33. Index of Passages 427
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111340944-021

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Preface V
  3. Contents VII
  4. List of Figures XI
  5. Introduction 1
  6. Part I: Facing Unfinishedness
  7. From the Authorial to the Editorial tour de force: How to Read Callimachus’ Aetia and Hecale 21
  8. How to Walk Along a Pioneer’s Fragmentary Track: Theophrastus’ Meteorological Studies 41
  9. Fragments of Roman Sexuality in Petronius’ Satyricon 59
  10. Part II: Questioning (In)Completeness
  11. The “Alexandrian End” of the Odyssey 89
  12. Reconsidering Closure in Ovid’s Fasti 115
  13. Statius’ Achilleid: How to Break off a carmen perpetuum 127
  14. Literatura Incompleta: Borges’ Antiquity between World and Universe 143
  15. Part III: Constitutive Unfinishedness
  16. Sed redeo ad formulam (Off. 3.20): Completeness and Imperfection in Cicero’s De officiis 165
  17. Relativizing Unfinishedness: Lucretian Textuality and Epicurean Therapy 189
  18. The Fragment as a Form: A Reading of Fragments d’un discours amoureux by Barthes 211
  19. Arrhythmic Historiography, Lost Letters and Broken Meanings: Fulgentius’s De aetatibus mundi et hominis 225
  20. “This City Will Always Pursue You”: The Impossible End of Rutilius Namatianus’ Return 241
  21. Part IV: Reading Unfinishedness
  22. Finishing Iphigenia in Aulis 261
  23. Seneca’s Phoenissae: In Search of an Ending 275
  24. How to Read Hyginus’ Fabulae? Theories and Practices 289
  25. The Rest was not Perfected: Platonic Endings and their Modern Echoes 311
  26. War as a Permanent Civil War: The “Unfinished” History in Pasolini’s Petrolio 331
  27. Part V: Searching for Completion
  28. The Missing Conclusion to Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica 353
  29. Speaking Silences: The Incompleteness of Tacitus’ Annals and Gustav Freytag’s Die verlorene Handschrift 383
  30. Putting an Unfinished Novel Back into Motion: A Digital Tool to Create Possible “Second Volumes” of Bouvard et Pécuchet 405
  31. List of Contributors 419
  32. General Index 423
  33. Index of Passages 427
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