SOURCE: Erickson, Karen L. “Prophetic Utterance and Irony in Trois contes.” In Modernity and Revolution in Late Nineteenth-Century France, edited by Barbara T. Cooper and Mary Donaldson-Evans, pp. 65-73. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1992.

In the following essay, Erickson examines the role of both prophecy and irony in Trois contes.

Prophecy is a recurrent voice in Flaubert's collection of tales, and provides a parabolic narrative model for a kind of textual transmission rooted in historical social commentary—the visionary challenge to a community through the voice of a prophet.¹ In this [essay], I will examine the role of the prophet in Trois contes, the ways in which prophetic utterances affect narrative structure, and the role of irony in the process of challenging the characters continually to reinterpret the meaning of prophecy and of their very nature. I use the term “irony” here to mean the progressive revelation to...