I showed my class assignment to Elvio Angeloni who was esteemed Professor of English at Pasadena City College.

Shirley was working for and with him as a paid assistant for his large class of students learning English. She multiplied the ratio of student ability to talk one-on-one, the students learned more quickly, and proudly shared their culture. They loved her, as everyone did. I was in good company.

Elvio got to talking with me as fellow English teachers. We became collegial friends with mutual respect.

I showed him the class assignment I had just given my high school seniors. I realized I had a copy with me.

My class was reading Madame Bovary. Elvio looked at the assignment, read it, said, “Very good. College level.”

Other college professors read it, looked at me closely, and said, “Are you sure you’re teaching high school? My university graduate students would…”

I said, “You’ll meet my students after they graduate from high school.”

My students and I both agreed that levels of learning and restrictions are artificial. We all read the same things. Poets write for readers no matter who they are. Readers read the poets no matter who they are. Variations may be generic but are not automatically based on hierarchy. Language democratizes the world.

So, I thought, once again, I’d share some of what we did, could do, in a regular public high school in Pasadena.

Elvio said it was “Good. College level.”

THE ASSIGNMENT:

                                                                                                                                                Name_____________

                                                                                                                                                Date______________

MADAME BOVARY     Part II, Chapter 8

“In this one, brilliant sequence of film making,…the massacre on the Odessa steps,…(Sergei) Eisenstein created…a truly virtuoso display of all the basic cutting principles—parallel editing, rhythmic, tonal, directional and “shock.”…He used the French word for editing, montage, which means literally “mounting,” or “putting together.”

                                –Arthur Knight, The Liveliest Art, p. 80.

“Strangely enough, it was Flaubert who gave us one of the finest examples of cross-montage of dialogues, used with the same intention of expressive sharpening of idea. This is the scene in Madame Bovary where Emma and Rodolphe grow more intimate. Two lines of speech are interlaced: the speech of the orator in the square below, and the conversation of the future lovers…with the “pieces” developing increasing tension…As we can see, this is an interweaving of the two lines, thematically identical, equally trivial. The matter is sublimated to a monumental triviality, whose climax is reached through a continuation of the cross-cutting and word-play, with the significance always dependent on the juxtaposition of the two lines. Literature is full of such examples. This method is used with increasing popularity by Flaubert’s artistic heirs.”

                                –Sergei Eisenstein, Film Form, Essays in Film Theory, pp. 12-13.

“Flaubert had a special device which may be called the counterpoint method, or the method of parallel interlinings and interruptions of two or more conversations or trains of thought…On 15 July 1853, Flaubert wrote: “Tonight I have made a preliminary sketch of my great scene of the county fair. It will be huge—about thirty manuscript pages. This is what I want to do. While describing that rural show (where all the secondary characters of the book appear, speak, and act) I shall pursue…between its details an on the front of the stage a continuous dialogue between a lady and a gentleman who is turning his charm on her. Moreover, I have in the middle of the solemn speech of a councilor and at the end something I have quite finished writing, namely a newspaper article by Homais, who gives an account of the festivities in his best philosophic, poetic, and progressive style.” The thirty pages of the episode took three months to write. In another letter, of 7 September, Flaubert noted: “How difficult it is…A tough chapter. I have therein all the characters of my book intermingled in action and in dialogue, and…a big landscape that envelops them. If I succeed it will be most symphonic.” On 12 October: “If ever the values of a symphony have been transferred to literature, it will be in this chapter of my book. It must be a vibrating totality of sounds. One should hear simultaneously the bellowing of the bulls, the murmur of love, and the phrases of the politicians. The sun shines on it, and there are gusts of wind that set the big white bonnets astir….I obtain dramatic movement merely through dialogue interplay and character contrast.”

–Vladimir Nabokov,  Lectures on Literature,  p. 147-156.

Assignment: In the light of the passages above, and using appropriate examples selected from the chapter, show what Flaubert is doing or revealing about his characters and their interrelationships. Analyze the virtuosity with which he allows speeches, by juxtaposition, to comment on and undercut the revealed intent of what is being said.