The Relationship between Subject and Power in Don Quixote and Madame Bovary Novels according to Michel Foucault's Theories

Don Quixote and Madame Bovary are among the most influential novels in the history of fictions. This paper compares the elements of these two novels, based on Michel Foucault’s theories (1926-1984). Foucault analyzes the structure of power in the form of subjectivity and criticizes the bases of Western metaphysic. Foucault, in his whole project, reveals the obvious principles and criteria in which the structure of dominant power defines the good life based on them. In this project, the interpretation of fiction has very important role. Accordingly, this paper tries to analyze how Don Quixote and Madame Bovary exhibit the normalization of a special form of good life in western culture and how they introduce a new style of life according on fiction; or In other word, how they establish a new subjectivity, and how, in this process, story and fact, words and things are combined. So, the paper reveals that the fiction can set up a way of life that resist against the dominant structure of normal life. On the contrary, the dominant structure refuses to accept the changes and stands firm against new trends by controlling, modifying, excluding, and imprisoning any forms of otherness.