Exoticism in Salammbô

Book excerpt: Using contemporary theories of semiology, Professor Mullen Hohl offers a detailed analysis of exoticism in Flaubert's masterpiece. A pervasive schema of multiplicity and mutilation gives the novel its fundamental structure, rather than the previously accepted dichotomy based upon the dialectical opposition of moon and sun. In this manner Flaubert created metonymic correspondences, shared identities, and equivalences between certain characters and mythological gods of the ancient Mediterranean world--most importantly Adonis. Language and religion are seen as instruments of obfuscation and ambiguity. "Hohl thus offers a powerful challenge to the conventional reading of Salammbo as a series of dialectical oppositions between mail and female, sun and moon, civilized and barbarian." --Stirling Haig, French Review.