SOURCE: "Aspects of the Novel," in Madame Bovary On Trial, Cornell University Press, 1982, pp. 169-208.
In the following excerpt, LaCapra argues that "Madame Bovary is not simply a 'tragedy of dreams' that places responsibility for Emma's fate' on her reading of romantic novels." He focuses instead on "how modifications in narrative perspective provide a nonlinear subplot" which he relates to the novel's theme of temporality.
