Genre et vocation : La Vocation de Gustave Flaubert de René Dumesnil (1961)

If the concept of vocation perpetuates an idealizing vision of the regime of creation, it is partly due to the enduring popularity of the biographical genre, which continues to successfully legitimize the fascination inspired by artistic and literary exceptionality. Its dramatized narrative models a trajectory leading from an inherent potentiality towards a final consecration. Recently, however, critics have challenged this ideal representation and emphasised the exclusions made by some biographers anxious to safeguard male territories and to dismiss women from the artistic field. Taking René Dumesnil’s La Vocation de Gustave Flaubert as an example, this article highlights what the biography of this “national author” excludes or encompasses when it comes to evoking his vocation and why its biographemes are based on mechanisms undermining the input of women around him.