G. Flaubert

Castigated for offending against public decency, `Madame Bovary` has rarely failed to cause a storm. For Flaubert`s contemporaries, the fascination came from the novelist`s meticulous account of provincial manners. For the writer, subject matter was subordinate to his anguished quest for aesthetic perfection. For his twentieth-century successors the formal experiments that underpin `Madame Bovary` look forward to the innovations of contemporary fiction. Flaubert`s protagonist in particular hasnever ceased to fascinate. Romantic heroine or middle-class neurotic, flawed wife and mother or passionate protestor against the conventions of bourgeois society, simultaneously the subject of Flaubert`s admiration and the butt of his irony - Emma...

Издательство: Wordsworth Editions Ltd.
Дата выхода: январь 1998

Flaubert's story of the beautiful Madame Bovary scandalized Paris when first published in 1856. Seen as flagrantly amoral, its writer was himself prosecuted and, after a sensational trial, acquitted. Today, however, his novel is recognized as a milestone in European literature. Emma Rouault leaves her father to marry Charles Bovary, an insignificant local doctor, and to live among the bourgeoisie of Yonville. An ardent devourer of sentimental novels, Emma fills her head with fantastic notions of gallantry and high romance, which she soon finds lacking in her dull husband. Disillusioned and frustrated she finds solace in a tempestuous love affair with the local squire, naively imagining that he will fulfil her desires. Torn between...

Издательство: Penguin Books
Дата выхода: апрель 2000