SOURCE: "Values," in Flaubert: The Uses of Uncertainty, Cornell University Press, 1974, pp. 157-232.

In the following excerpt, Culler discusses the function of "stupidity" in Flaubert's themes, symbols, narrative strategies, and characters. Culler connects the idea of stupefaction with Flaubert's notion of the experience of "reverie" and the incomprehensible as the goal of art.

Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.

SCHILLER

BÊTISE ET POÉSIE. Il y a des relations subtiles entre ces deux ordres. L'ordre de la bêtise et celui de la poésie.

VALERY¹

A.stupidity

At the age of nine, in a letter that one is pleased to regard as prophetic, Gustave discovered his first literary project: 'comme il y a une dame qui vient chez papa et qui nous contes toujours de bêtises je les écrirait' (i, l).² And write them he did, for the rest of his life...