The enduring literary fame of Gustave Flaubert was established all at one go, in the course of a famous trial that simultaneously brought him success and scandal. In 1857, when Madame Bovary (translated 1881) was appearing in serial form, the imperial...

The French novelist Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) was one of the most important forces in creating the modern novel as a conscious art form and in launching, much against his will, the realistic school in France. Gustave Flaubert was born on Dec. 12,...

Gustave Flaubert disliked photography because he felt it was a refuge for bad painters who did not want to take the time to learn how to paint. Therefore, there are very few daguerreotypes of Flaubert and so the discovery of a previously unpublished photograph...

Monarch Notes 01-01-1963 Introduction Note To The Reader: Madame Bovary may not be an easy book to like. If the student reading the novel for the first time finds it somehow cold or unsympathetic, puzzling or "monotonous," he will be in respectable company. Such...

Today is Tuesday, June 19, the 170th day of 2007. There are 195 days left in the year.Today's Highlight in History:On June 19, 1865, Union troops commanded by Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, with news that the Civil War was over, and...

Todd Field’s Little Children, from a screenplay by Mr. Field and Tom Perrotta, based on the novel by Mr. Perrotta, is centered on a contemporary suburban Madame Bovary, Sarah Pierce, played with full-bodied grace and gusto by Kate Winslet. Sarah is a housewife who seems...

In the following essay, Overaker suggests that in Flaubert's story “Un Coeur simple,” through the character of Félicité and the parrot named Loulou, one is witness “to a serious and triumphant spiritual journey in which the workings of the Holy Ghost are disclosed.”

In the following essay, Lowe discusses "the French tradition of orientalism " and the treatment of "otherness" in Flaubert's works. Lowe argues that "Flaubert's corpus, considered as a series of orien-talist moments, reflects the divided and conflicted nature of nineteenth-century French culture itself.''

In the following excerpt, Culler discusses the function of "stupidity" in Flaubert's themes, symbols, narrative strategies, and characters. Culler connects the idea of stupefaction with Flaubert's notion of the experience of "reverie" and the incomprehensible as the goal of art.