There were many people in France writing realistic novels in the nineteenth century—Balzac comes to mind—but Flaubert was the most conscious of what he was doing, and agonized about it the most. Closely observed reality, for its own sake, had not really been a part of the tradition of literature in the eighteenth century. Flaubert will spend a whole page evoking tiny sounds and motes of dust in an empty room because he's getting at something. He's saying there's meaning to be got out of the very closely observed events of ordinary reality. In literary, scientific and photographic terms—the invention of photography happened when he was in his teens—the nineteenth century, to a much greater degree than the eighteenth, was concerned with the close observation of reality. All of science in the nineteenth century was about very close observation of small things…. The nineteenth century focussed and greatly expanded these concepts. It made them central to the novel, to the symphony, to painting.