Gustave Flaubert facts
- Gustave Flaubert was a French novelist, born in Rouen, France on December 12, 1821. Died Croisset, France, May 8, 1880.
- Flaubert wrote of ordinary middle-class people and tried to portray their lives with complete objectivity.
- His Madame Bovary, widely regarded as the model of realistic fiction. is one of the world's great novels.
- Flaubert is particularly famous for his meticulous craftsmanship and his painstaking care to flnd the exact word (le mot juste) to express his meaning.
- Gustave Flaubert studied law in Paris, but after several attacks of a nervous ailment he devoted himself to literature.
- Madame Bovary (1857) was Flaubert's first published work. A story of provincial life, it describes the moral downfall of a woman who cannot see the world realistically. In her desperate attempt to
- find romance, she commits adultery and is ultimately driven to suicide.
- Flaubert's second novel, the historical romance Salammbó (1862), was based on extensive research and his own trip to Africa.
- His next novel, The Sentimental Educatian (1869), is regarded by some critics as his finest achievement. It is the story of a sentimental young man, with many of Flaubert's own traits, whose weakness and muddled idealism cause him to ruin his life.
- Although Flaubert's work is sometimes criticized for its repression of spontaneous vitality, it is greatly admired for its psychological accuracy, telling irony, and technical perfection. With the stories of Honoré de Balzac, it marked the turning point in French fiction from Romanticism to Realism. Flaubert's style influenced many later writers, including Émile Zola, Guy de Maupassant, and the American Naturalists.
