(urth) Flaubert's _The Temptation of Saint Anthony_ as influence on _New Sun_?

David Stockhoff dstockhoff at verizon.net
Tue Apr 16 05:06:58 PDT 2013


I don't know who this Jason Price Everett guy is, but his workbook is 
... interesting. And Michael Moorcock likes him:

http://8thhousepublishing.com/Shop/index.php?main_page=product_music_info&products_id=18

On 4/15/2013 11:29 PM, Darth Ed wrote:
> My Wolfe reading group has been re-reading _The Book of the New Sun_ lately. For about half the group, this is our third or fourth time reading it. For the remainder, it is our second time.
>
> One of our members remarked that he had recently read Gustave Flaubert's _The Temptation of Saint Anthony_ [*] and he was struck by how many words from _New Sun_'s antiquated vocabulary were used in _The Temptation of Saint Anthony_.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Temptation_of_Saint_Anthony_(Flaubert)
>
> He listed a half dozen examples, which I can't recall at the moment, but it was a very convincing list. We all thought it was very possible that this novel may have had a profound influence on Wolfe in his writing of _The Book of the New Sun_. The subject matter is certainly something that Wolfe might have been interested in following his conversion to Catholicism. I thought surely someone must have made this connection previously, but my searches of the urth.net mailing list, WolfeWiki.com, and the web at large revealed no discussion that I could locate of any connection between Wolfe and Flaubert's _The Temptation of Saint Anthony_, except for *one* academic book on Google Books:
>
> http://books.google.com/books?id=tE4FPNc8pr4C&lpg=PA106&ots=0GAiFFsx8a&dq=flaubert%20gene%20wolfe%20new%20sun%20temptation&pg=PA106#v=onepage&q=flaubert%20gene%20wolfe%20new%20sun%20temptation&f=false
>
> The author of the essay rather matter-of-factly states, right after quoting a passage from Gustave Flaubert's _The Temptation of Saint Anthony_:
>
> "Gene Wolfe's _Book of the New Sun_ obviously derived in equal part from the _Temptation_ and Borges's _Book of Imaginary Beings_ (which itself contains many excerpts from the former source)."
>
> Sadly, the next page in that book is not visible on Google Books. A member of our group purchased the book from Google Books to check, and the Wolfe discussion pretty much ends with that sentence. Fortunately, Google Books has a convenient return policy. :-)
>
> Has anyone here read Flaubert's _The Temptation of Saint Anthony_ and would care to comment?
>
> Has Wolfe made any comments concerning Flaubert or _The Temptation of Saint Anthony_ in any interviews?
>
> Obviously, Borges' work has long been recognized as an influence on Wolfe and _New Sun_. Is this possible Flaubert connection relatively untrodden territory? Or is this something generally known and my Google searches just didn't turn up much discussion of it?
>
> Thanks,
> Ed
>




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