Madame Bovary (Wonders of the World) - Softcover

Flaubert, Gustave

3.7

335,612 ratings by Goodreads

9780140448184: Madame Bovary (Wonders of the World)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140448187 ISBN 13: 9780140448184

Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd, 2002

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Flaubert's heroine, Emma, is a bored provincial housewife who abandons her husband to pursue the libertine Rodolphe in a desperate love affair. The book created a sensation when it was published - the author was prosecuted for offending public morals and later aquitted.

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From the Publisher:

This exquisite novel tells the story of one of the most compelling heroines in modern literature--Emma Bovary. Unhappily married to a devoted, clumsy provincial doctor, Emma revolts against the ordinariness of her life by pursuing voluptuous dreams of ecstasy and love. But her sensuous and sentimental desires lead her only to suffering corruption and downfall. A brilliant psychological portrait, Madame Bovary searingly depicts the human mind in search of transcendence. Who is Madame Bovary? Flaubert's answer to this question was superb: "Madame Bovary, c'est moi." Acclaimed as a masterpiece upon its publication in 1857, the work catapulted Flaubert to the ranks of the world's greatest novelists. This volume, with its fine translation by Lowell Bair, a perceptive introduction by Leo Bersani, and a complete supplement of essays and critical comments, is the indispensable Madame Bovary.

From the Inside Flap:

o peer into the heart of an adulteress and enumerate its contents with profound dispassion, the author of Madame Bovary was tried for "offenses against morality and religion." What shocks us today about Flaubert's devastatingly realized tale of a young woman destroyed by the reckless pursuit of her romantic dreams is its pure artistry: the poise of its narrative structure, the opulence of its prose (marvelously captured in the English translation of Francis Steegmuller), and its creation of a world whose minor figures are as vital as its doomed heroine. In reading Madame Bovary, one experiences a work that remains genuinely revolutionary almost a century and a half after its creation.

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