Talk:Flaubert's Parrot

Why doesn't the article mention that Barnes missed the point?
"Not for nothing does Félicité confuse Loulou with the Holy Ghost", writes Barnes. But then he goes off on a hundred tangents and does not find out, why she does. The reason for this is not, as the article claims, that there are so many stuffed parrots around in the real existing world. The reason is, that there is no "parrot" at all in Flaubert's story, but only in very bad translations of that story. Flaubert was never shortlisted for the Booker prize, but he was very particular about the birds he would use in connection with the Holy Ghost: a dove maybe, but a bullfinch or a bat certainly not. To Félicité he gave a perroquet (at the time aka paroquet or paraquet), which is exactly fitting. Flaubert knew, what he was writing about, and did not have a tin ear. If he had written in English, he would never have used "parrot", because "parrot" does not bring up the Holy Ghost in front of anybody's spiritual eye. Instead he would have used PARAKEET. --Hanno Kuntze 09:31, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

I think Hanno is suggesting that Flaubert was playing with the similarity in sounds (in French) of parakeet and Paraclete which is used of the Holy Spirit. Nedrutland (talk) 10:09, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

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