In the first person (plural): Carrère, Flaubert and Sacred Writing

Abstract

With the publication of L’Adversaire, Emmanuele Carrère’s work takes a decisive shift; he leaves behind the genre of the novel and, at the same time, gives up the impersonal style that is characteristic of Flaubert. By means of controlled fictions and making use of a «method’s I», in Le Royaume he succeeds in taking literature to its most inquisitive expression. The inquiry into the origins of Christianity is also a fictitious, though plausible, portrayal of Luke the Evangelist as a writer and, consequently, a narrative study. Carrère interrogates the unusual «us» in the Acts of the Apostles, which is indirectly linked to the famous «us in Madame Bovary. From the analysis if these three works we can infer that the influence of Flaubert continues to be profound and that Carrère shares with him a conception of literature in which the sacred and the profane are intermingled.