Agnon & Flaubert: Hebraizing a French Master

Robert Alter (University of California, Berkeley) on the influence of Gustav Flaubert on the writing style of S.Y. Agnon. Keynote address at a conference sponsored by Agnon House, Crown Center of Northwestern University, Prootexts Journal, and HUC-JIR. Focusing on three examples, Alter showed that the interplay between narration and character development in Agnon’s “A Simple Story” betray a distinctly Flaubertian quality, particularly around the use of free indirect discourse.