Patologie medyczne czy psychologiczne? Wymiary choroby w Pani Bovary

Abstract

The aim of the article titled Medical or Psychological Pathologies? Dimensions of Illness in “Madame Bovary” is to indicate the relationship between pathological conditions afflicting the protagonists of Gustave Flaubert’s modernist novel: Emma and the Blind Man. The developed conference reflection points out what pathology was presented in the historical-literary context (ways of defining it, the development of the concept) and in the author’s biographical background, as well as w hat significance the descriptions of ailments accompanying the characters had for the course of the plot and for the message of the work. The conducted analytical and interpretative activities also demonstrate how the poetics of the realist novel makes it possible to present the issue of pathology on several levels, namely: sociology, psychology, and medicine. These three disciplines simultaneously become types of pathologies identified in the work and discussed in the article. The chosen method of hermeneutic literary research allows for the interpretation of the novel in accordance with medical, psychological, and literary knowledge. The article’s conclusions confirm the inseparability of the pathological threads of Emma and the Blind Man, thereby supporting the thesis. They indicate how, since modernism, literature has increasingly and more closely examined the complex issue of pathological conditions.