Madame Bovary (Norton Critical Edition Series) » (2nd Edition)

Gustave Flaubert (1821-80) is considered to be one of the most important French novelists of the nineteenth century. He's most well known for his novel Madame Bovary, and for his desire to write
"a book about nothing," a novel in which all external elements,
especially the presence of the author, have been eliminated, leaving nothing but style itself. Often considered a member of the naturalist school, Flaubert despised categorizations of this sort, and in novels like Bouvard and Pécuchet demonstrates the inaptness of this label. In addition to these two novels, he is also the author of A Sentimental Education, Salambo, Three Tales, and The Temptation of Saint Anthony.

Margaret Cohen is Professor in the Department of French and Italian at Stanford University. Her publications include The Sentimental Education of the Novel and Profane Illumination: Walter Benjamin and the Paris of Surrealist Revolution, as well as the co-edited collections Spectacles of Realism—Body, Gender, Genre and The Literary Channel: The Inter-national Inventions of the Novel. She has also translated and edited Sophie Cottin’s Claire d’Albe (1799).

Madame Bovary is the story of a beautiful young woman who marries a luckless and loutish country doctor. She attempts to escape the narrow confines of her life through a series of passionate affairs, hoping to find in other men the romantic ideal she has always dreamed about. Her recklessness comes back to haunt her, however, and the strong-willed and independent Emma finds herself in a desperate fight for existence.

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