They are arranged in a new design to suit every new theme
that a writer takes in hand; we see them alternated, united, imposed
one on another, this point of view blended with that, dramatic action
treated pictorially, pictorial description rendered dramatically--and
these words I use throughout, it will be understood, in the special
sense that I have indicated. In well-fashioned work it is always
interesting to discover how method tends to be laid upon method, so
that we get, as it were, layers and stratifications in the treatment
of a story. Some of these I shall try to distinguish, and the search
is useful, I think, for an understanding of the novelist himself. For
though it is true that a man's method depends upon the particular
story he is engaged in telling, yet the story that occurs to him, the
subject he happens upon, will be that which asks for the kind of
treatment congenial to his hand; and so his method will be a part of
himself, and will tell us about the quality of his imagination. But
this by the way--my concern is only with the manner in which the thing
is done; and having glanced at some of the features of that manner in
Flaubert's Bovary, I may now seek the reason of them in a more
attentive handling of the book.
VI
If Flaubert allows himself the liberty of telling his story in various
ways--with a method, that is to say, which is often modified as he
proceeds--it is likely that he has good cause to do so.
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