Exchanging values: A comparison of Flaubert's concept of irony in 'Madam Bovary' and Faulkner's reading of commodity culture in 'Absalom, Absalom!' (Gustave Flaubert, William Faulkner, France)

Flaubert attacked what he called "avachissement universel," the spread of bourgeois stupidity to all aspects of French culture. Faulkner also coined a term that indicated his concern with cultural changes, "snopesism." The differences between these two concepts, bovarism and snopesism, manifest a dramatic shift in the representation of society effected by the rise of commodity culture. Focusing on classical topoi as particularly dense cultural signifiers, I look at the developing presentations of culture in Absalom, Absalom! and Madame Bovary. As stable referents of bourgeois culture, classical topoi strongly identify a set of cultural values for Flaubert that he can then ironize. Faulkner, by contrast, demonstrates the destabilization of cultural referents with the "rise of the redneck" signaled by snopesism. However, while Flaubertian irony relies on the bourgeois betise he criticizes, Faulkner's critique of snopesism develops the tensions between utopian fantasies of fulfillment and irretrievable loss.