ABSTRACT
Frames may lead logically to cycles. The unity of cycles often comes, not through devices of narration, but rather through association or development of images and themes. Authors, thus, circumvent the restriction of brevity and, yet, exploit the genre’s compressed nature. Flaubert’s TroisContes demonstrates the firm integration of three saints’ tales into a unity that moves in a retrograde sequence from the present through the medieval period and back to the time of Christ, while simultaneously bringing the three stories together in a powerfully cohesive image of the religion of art.
