This is Bourdieu?s long–awaited study of Flaubert and the formation of the modern literary field. It was in the nineteenth century that the literary universe as we know it today took shape, as a space set apart from the approved academies of the state. No one could any longer dictate with authority what ought to be written, or decree the canons of good taste: recognition and consecration were produced in and through the struggle in which writers, critics and publishers confronted one another. The aesthetic project of Gustave Flaubert was formed at the very moment when the literary field became autonomous. Through a careful analysis of the genesis and structure of the literary field, Bourdieu is able to show how the work of Flaubert was shaped by the different currents, movements, schools and authors of the time – how, in other words, Flaubert was the product of the very field that he helped to produce. By uncovering the rules of art, the logic which writers and literary...