Bovarism as a disease transmitted “textually” and not only. A study of the cultural phenomenon from France to Haiti 4018-KONW95-CLASS

The course aims to analyse the phenomenon of Bovarism - from Bovarism in the philosophy of Jules de Gaultier (Le bovarysme. La psychologie dans l’œuvre de Flaubert, 1892, and Le Bovarysme. Essai sur le pouvoir d’imaginer, 1902), where Bovarism is defined as an inherent human quality, to its evolution in three directions.
On the one hand, there is collective Bovarism, which Arnold van Gennep analysed in the inhabitants of Liberia from the early 20th century, and later Jean Price-Mars analysed in the 1920s in Haiti. Their observations were expanded upon in the 1950s by Frantz Fanon in his study on the inhabitants of Martinique and in recent years in Homi K. Bhabha’s study on mimicry in the inhabitants of the British colonies.
On the other hand, the 20th century saw the medicalization of Bovarism in a process initiated by Gaultier himself (who defined Bovarism also as a “principe hystérique”) and taking place - interestingly - only in France. The medicalization of Bovarism occurs on two planes - psychiatric and psychoanalytical:
- in psychiatry it appears from ca. 1907 and means an inability to adapt (Joseph Grasset), a paranoia (Georges Gentil-Perrin), mythomania and lack of self-criticism (Joseph Levy-Valensi), conflict with reality (Jean Delay), a typically feminine pathological neurosis (Antoine Perot)
- in psychoanalysis it appears from ca. the late 1940s as a kind of narcissism (Maryse Choisy), a basic human function (Jacques Lacan), or a characterological neurosis (Jean Bergeret).
The third aspect of Bovarism, which one might call erotic/literary, Bovarism as a textually transmitted disease as Daniel Pennac wittily defined it, is a general European tendency identified with literary characters, already seen in the early 17th century in Don Quixote, in the 18th century as a result of the “Werther effect”, and in the 19th century in Emma Bovary (though there is a visible difference between the direct identification of Cervantes’ character and the illusory identification of Flaubert’s heroine).