Dictionary of Accepted Ideas
Gustave Flaubert
New Directions
<p>Jacques Barzun's masterful translation proves that Flaubert's <i>Dictionary of Accepted Ideas</i>&#8212;an acid catalogue of the clich&#233;s of 19th-century France&#8212;is as relevant today as ever.Throughout his life Flaubert made it a game to eavesdrop for the clich&#233;, the platitude, the borrowed and unquestioned idea with which the "right thinking" swaddle their minds. After his death his little treasury of absurdities, of half-truths and social lies, was published as a Dictionnaire des id&#233;es re&#231;ues. Because its devastating humor and irony are often dependent on the phrasing in vernacular French, the Dictionnairewas long considered untranslatable. This notion was taken as a challenge by Jacques Barzun. Determined to find the exact English equivalent for each "accepted idea" Flaubert recorded, he has succeeded in documenting our own inanities. With a satirist's wit and a scholar's precision, Barzun has produced a very contemporary self-portrait of the...