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Madame Bovary and the Institutional Transformation of Pharmacy

Duffy, Larry (2011) Madame Bovary and the Institutional Transformation of Pharmacy. Dix-Neuf, 15 (1). pp. 70-82. ISSN 1478-7318. (doi:10.1179/147873111X12973011702374) (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:30310)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.
Official URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1179/147873111X12973011702374

Abstract

Discussion of Flaubert's pharmacist Homais has tended to focus on his overbearing personality and representativity of bourgeois values. This essay looks instead at the epistemological and disciplinary substance of his pronouncements on pharmacy for the ways in which they articulate the development of early nineteenth-century pharmacy as a profession. Contextualizing Homais and Charles Bovary as representatives of their respective medical domains in the aftermath of reforms enacted during the Empire, this essay reads the novel alongside texts emblematic of an institutionally reshaped pharmacy. First, it examines material from the influential Bulletin de Pharmacie, which from 1809 to 1814 articulated a new vision of pharmacy — shared by Homais — as 'philosophical' science in the manner of Lavoisier's chemistry. Second, it scrutinizes the 'opuscules scientifiques' by Guillaume Dubuc, a Rouen pharmacist, for the strong correlation between these and numerous pronouncements by Homais. Rather than seek in this correlation a real-life model for Homais, the essay identifies what Foucault refers to as 'les conditions de fonctionnement de pratiques discursives spécifiques', in this case the institutional conditions shaping pharmaceutical and literary discourse.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1179/147873111X12973011702374
Uncontrolled keywords: EMPIRE; KNOWLEDGE; GUSTAVE FLAUBERT; PHARMACY; MEDICINE; SCIENCE; PROFESSION; CHEMISTRY; DISCIPLINE; WRITING; POISON
Subjects: P Language and Literature > PQ Romance Literature > PQ1 French Literature
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Arts and Humanities > School of Culture and Languages
Depositing User: Fiona Symes
Date Deposited: 28 Aug 2012 15:35 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 10:08 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/30310 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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