The influence of commedia Dell’ Arte, Theophile Gautier's and Victor Hugo's creative work in Gustav Flaubert's novel “Madame Bovary”

The article is aimed to identify the influence of the traditions of commedia del arte (comedy of masks, Italian folk comedy), of the writings of Theophile Gauthier and Victor Hugo on the character system and the plot of the novel by Gustave Flaubert “Madame Bovary” (1856). Fragments from the writer’s letters to his lover, Louise Colet, as well as the facts of his biography, the dramatic experience and, in particular, the collaboration with Louis Buile on the play “Pierrot in Serale” (1847), serve as evidence of the influence of the aesthetics of comedy del arte on Flaubert. The analysis of the images of the main characters in the perspective of the aesthetics of commedia del arte owes methodologically to the monographs of Maurice Sand and Winifred Smith, which became classic in world literary criticism, “The History of the Harlequinade” and “Commedia del Arte: A Study of Italian Folk Comedy”. The author of the article proves the origin of the images of Charles, Emma, Ome, Leray, Leon and Rodolph and compares her own conclusions with the hypotheses of the genesis of the characters put forward by Rosemary Lloyd and Francisco Gonzalez. In addition, the article introduces the concept of “harlequinide grotesque” and defines the function of the farcical principle in the novel “Madame Bovary.” The work also analyzes the allusions to the novel by T. Gauthier “This and that, or Young Frenchmen, overwhelmed by passions” (1833) and the novel by V. Hugo “Notre Dame de Paris” (1831). The explained plot parallels make us to talk about the tradition of “harlequinade grotesque” in French romantic literature and about the input of the works of Gauthier and Hugo in the formation of Gustave Flaubert’s unique style.