The aim of the article is to analyze the experience of solitude in Memoirs of aMadman (1838), one of the youthful works of Gustave Flaubert, where autobiographical and fictional elements are interspersed. The narrator of Memoirs… is a loner in a threefoldsense: social (it is a result of reluctance and even hatred towards society and a consequence of misanthropy and romantic elitism), metaphysical (a man in Memoirs… seemsto be abandoned, vainly seeking rest in God or in any au-delà) and existential (Memoirs… are written by someone who is empty, burned out, unable to creatively engage in life; he is a stranger to himself). The typology seems to be an obvious affirmation of romantic phenomenon.But Flaubert’s youthful work is not imitative: the experience of loneliness has been subjected to a process of disillusion that ruins the romantic myths
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