Representation in Flaubert\u27s Salammbo : Subjectivity actualized

Flaubert has often been viewed as a Realist whose oeuvre underscores the tenuous nature of the mimetic enterprise. This study attempts to show how $\underline{\rm Salammb\ o}$\u27s fictionality is achieved through the internal referential workings of the narrative. The extent to which the text reveals its autonomous status simultaneously discloses the author\u27s attitude toward perceived reality and its expression. In the Carthaginian novel, distribution of descriptive elements, seemingly posing as exotic faits de civilisation, is based on their potential to generate fictional closed-circuits, anticipating and reflecting on the action. The artistic manipulation of Moloch\u27s pictorial depiction facilitates the representation of a violent world, and engenders, via the recurrence of motifs that are metonymically related to the idol and his setting, a sacrificial reading of the text (Part I). Integration of Phoenician legend in the narrative, establishing the mystico-sexual context underlying male-female attraction, reveals the significant contribution of myth for the rendition of psychology (Part II). The notion that reality originates within a specific mode of vision is demonstrated in and through the narrative. On the thematic level, the events mirror the imagined dimension of the characters\u27 subjective perspective; on a textual level, form mirrors content via the writer\u27s progressive blurring of factual and figurative discourse. Part I demonstrates how the characters\u27 distorted point of view constitutes the fictional foundation of the developing action. Part II posits Salammbo\u27s involvement in the plot by Schahabarim as the eunuch\u27s mythologization of the action. In the novel, the representation of the Mercenaries thematizes the unreliable nature of language (Part III). Spendius\u27s successful instigation of the revolt, based on his rhetorical ability and on his infiltration of an existing structure, emerges as the duplication of the Barbarians\u27 exploitation by Carthage. The transition between initial and actualized exploitation is marked by the slave\u27s adaptation of language--in order to influence meaning--to the pictorial sign system with which the Barbarians are familiar