Flaubert, Zola, and the Incorporation of Disciplinary Knowledge

Flaubert, Zola and the Incorporation of Disciplinary Knowledge transcends traditional author studies to focus on institutional dimensions of professional practices and knowledge concerning the body in nineteenth-century France, and on their articulation by literary and other texts. It examines how institutional developments in medicine and pharmacy are 'incorporated' within literary texts, arguing that such incorporation reflects acute concern with the body, and with knowledge considered metaphorically as body. In its innovative focus on incorporation as metaphor, the book explores theoretical relationships between body and text, exploiting the rich metaphorical potential of the institutional, professional body, constituted by discourse and associated with bodies of disciplinary knowledge. The institutional body 'incorporates' itself; the literary text 'incorporates' knowledge precisely about the body's incorporation of substances and practices. Offering cultural history of certain medical, pharmaceutical and scientific discourses, this book problematizes the boundaries between literary and other forms of discourse, themselves analogical to boundaries between different fields of disciplinary knowledge.