From the curieux to the collectionneur: Bouvard et Pécuchet and the Modern Culture of Collecting

This essay examines the representation of collecting practices in Bouvard et Pécuchet. It argues that Flaubert's novel enacts a shift from an epistemophilic culture of curiosity, in which the collection of objects was conceived of as a knowledge-producing exercise, to a modern culture of collecting, drained of epistemological significance. The essay thus begins by situating Bouvard et Pécuchet in the context of the emergence of a new culture of collecting in nineteenth-century France, which displaced the pre-Revolutionary culture of curiosity. It then goes on to explore the representation of both geological and historical collecting in the novel, focusing on how the clerks' expectation that collecting will produce useful knowledge is undermined. It then argues that the very form of Bouvard et Pécuchet, in which the two clerks relentlessly seek to accumulate useful knowledge and consistently fail to do so, is informed by the nineteenth-century culture of collecting.