| Gustave Flaubert | |
|---|---|
 Gustave Flaubert |
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| Born | 12 December 1821 Rouen, France |
| Died | 8 May 1880 (aged 58) Rouen, France |
| Occupation | Novelist, playwright |
| Nationality | French |
| Genres | Fictional prose |
| Literary movement | Realism, Romanticism |
Gustave Flaubert (French pronunciation: [ɡystav flobɛʁ]) (December 12, 1821 – May 8, 1880) was a French writer who is counted among the greatest Western novelists. He is known especially for his first published novel, Madame Bovary (1857), and for his scrupulous devotion to his art and style.
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Flaubert was born on December 12, 1821, in Rouen, Seine-Maritime, in the Haute-Normandie region of France. He was the second son of Achille-Cléophas Flaubert (1784–1846), a surgeon, and Anne Justine Caroline (née Fleuriot) (1793–1872). He began writing at an early age, as early as eight according to some sources.[1]
He was educated in his native city and did not leave it until 1840, when he went to Paris to study law. In Paris, he was an indifferent student and found the city distasteful. He made a few acquaintances, including Victor Hugo. Towards the close of 1840, he traveled in the Pyrenees and Corsica. In 1846, after an attack of epilepsy, he left Paris and abandoned the study of law.
From 1846 to 1854, Flaubert had a relationship with the poet Louise Colet (his letters to her survive). After leaving Paris, Flaubert returned to Croisset, near the Seine, close to Rouen, and lived with his mother in their home for the rest of his life; with occasional visits to Paris and England, where he apparently had a mistress. Flaubert never married. According to his biographer Émile Faguet, his affair with Louise Colet was his only serious romantic relationship. He sometimes visited prostitutes.[2] Eventually, the end of his affair with Louise Colet led Flaubert to lose interest in romance and seek platonic companionship, particularly with other writers.
With his lifelong friend Maxime du Camp, he traveled in Brittany in 1846. In 1849-1850 he went on a long journey to the Middle East, visiting Greece and Egypt. In Beirut he contracted syphilis. He spent five weeks in Constantinople in 1850. He visited Carthage in 1858 to conduct research for his novel Salammbô.
Flaubert was a tireless worker and often complained in his letters to friends about the strenuous nature of his work. He was close to his niece, Caroline Commanville, and had a close friendship and correspondence with George Sand. He occasionally visited Parisian acquaintances, including Émile Zola, Alphonse Daudet, Ivan Turgenev, and Edmond and Jules de Goncourt.
The 1870s were a difficult time for Flaubert. Prussian soldiers occupied his house during the War of 1870, and his mother died in 1872. After her death, he fell into financial straits. Flaubert suffered from venereal diseases most of his life. His health declined and he died at Croisset of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1880 at the age of 58. He was buried in the family vault in the cemetery of Rouen. A monument to him by Henri Chapu was unveiled at the museum of Rouen.
In September 1849, Flaubert completed the first version of a novel, The Temptation of Saint Anthony. He read the novel aloud to Louis Bouilhet and Maxime du Camp over the course of four days, not allowing them to interrupt or give any opinions. At the end of the reading, his friends told him to throw the manuscript in the fire, suggesting instead that he focus on day to day life rather than on fantastic subjects.
In 1850, after returning from Egypt, Flaubert began work on Madame Bovary. The novel, which took five years to write, was serialized in the Revue de Paris in 1856. The government brought an action against the publisher and author on the charge of immorality, which was heard during the following year, but both were acquitted. When Madame Bovary appeared in book form, it met with a warm reception.
In 1858, Flaubert traveled to Carthage to gather material for his next novel, Salammbô. The novel was completed in 1862 after four years of work.
Drawing on his childhood experiences, Flaubert next wrote L'Éducation sentimentale (Sentimental Education), an effort that took seven years. L'Éducation sentimentale, his last complete novel, was published in 1869.
He wrote an unsuccessful drama, Le Candidat, and published a reworked version of La Tentation de Saint-Antoine, portions of which had been published as early as 1857. He devoted much of his time to an ongoing project, Les Deux Cloportes (The Two Woodlice), which later became Bouvard et Pécuchet, breaking from the obsessive project only to write the Three Tales in 1877. This book comprised three stories: Un Cœur simple (A Simple Heart), La Légende de Saint-Julien l'Hospitalier (The Legend of St. Julian the Hospitaller), and Hérodias (Herodias). After the publication of the stories, he spent the remainder of his life toiling on the unfinished Bouvard et Pécuchet, which was posthumously printed in 1881. It was a grand satire on the futility of human knowledge and the ubiquity of mediocrity. He believed the work to be his masterpiece, though the posthumous version received lukewarm reviews. Flaubert was a prolific letter writer, and his letters have been collected in several publications.
Flaubert scrupulously avoids the inexact, the abstract, the vaguely inapt expression which is the bane of ordinary methods of composition. As a writer, Flaubert was nearly equal parts romantic, realist, and pure stylist. Hence, members of various schools, especially realists and formalists, have traced their origins to his work. The exactitude with which he adapts his expressions to his purpose can be seen in all parts of his work, especially in the portraits he draws of the figures in his principal romances. The degree to which Flaubert's fame has extended since his death presents an interesting chapter of literary history in itself. He is also accredited with spreading the popularity of the colour Tuscany Cypress, a colour often mentioned in his chef-d'oeuvre Madame Bovary.
Flaubert was fastidious in his devotion to finding the right word ("le mot juste"), and his mode of composition reflected that. He worked in sullen solitude - sometimes occupying a week in the completion of one page - never satisfied with what he had composed, violently tormenting his brain for the best turn of phrase, the final adjective. His private letters indeed show that he was not one of those to whom correct, flowing language came naturally. His style was achieved through the unceasing sweat of his brow. Flaubert’s just reward, then, is that many critics consider his best works to be exemplary models of style.
| “ | Novelists should thank Flaubert the way poets thank spring; it all begins again with him. There really is time before Flaubert and a time after him. Flaubert decisively established what most readers and writers think of as modern realist narration, and his influence is almost too familiar to be visible. We hardly remark of good prose that it favors the telling of brilliant detail; that it privileges a high degree of visual noticing; that it maintains an unsentimental composure and knows how to withdraw, like a good valet, from superfluous commentary; that it judges good and bad neutrally; that it seeks out the truth, even at the cost of repelling us; and that the author's fingerprints on all this are paradoxically, traceable but not visible. You can find some of this in Defoe or Austen or Balzac, but not all of it until Flaubert. | ” |
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—Critic James Wood in How Fiction Works (2008)[3] |
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Flaubert's lean and precise writing style has had a large influence on 20th century writers such as Franz Kafka through to J.M Coetzee. As Vladimir Nabokov discussed in his famous lecture series:
This painstaking style of writing is also evident when one compares Flaubert’s output over a lifetime to that of his peers (see, for example Balzac or Zola). Flaubert published much less prolifically than was the norm for his time and never got near the pace of a novel a year, as his peers often achieved during their peaks of activity. The legacy of his work habits can best be described, therefore, as paving the way towards a slower and more inspective manner of writing.
The publication of Madame Bovary in 1856 was followed by more scandal than admiration; it was not understood at first that this novel was the beginning of something new: the scrupulously truthful portraiture of life. Gradually, this aspect of his genius was accepted, and it began to crowd out all others. At the time of his death he was widely regarded as the most influential French Realist. Under this aspect Flaubert exercised an extraordinary influence over Guy de Maupassant, Edmond de Goncourt, Alphonse Daudet, and Zola. Even after the decline of the Realist school, Flaubert did not lose prestige in the literary community; he continues to appeal to other writers because of his deep commitment to aesthetic principles, his devotion to style, and his indefatigable pursuit of the perfect expression.
He can be said to have made cynicism into an art form, as evinced by this observation from 1846:
His Œuvres Complètes (8 vols., 1885) were printed from the original manuscripts, and included, besides the works mentioned already, the two plays, Le Candidat and Le Château des cœurs. Another edition (10 vols.) appeared in 1873–1885. Flaubert's correspondence with George Sand was published in 1884 with an introduction by Guy de Maupassant.
He has been admired or written about by almost every major literary personality of the 20th century, including philosophers and sociologists such as Pierre Bourdieu and Jean Paul Sartre whose partially psychoanalytic portrait of Flaubert in The Family Idiot was published in 1971. Georges Perec named Sentimental Education as one of his favourite novels. The Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa is another great admirer of Flaubert. Apart from Perpetual Orgy, which is solely devoted to Flaubert's art, one can find lucid discussions in Vargas Llosa's recently published Letters to a Young Novelist.
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This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
Gustave Flaubert (1821-12-12 – 1880-05-08) was a French novelist.
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GUSTAVE FLAUBERT (1821-1880), French novelist, was born at Rouen on the 12th of December 1821. His father, of whom many traits are reproduced in Flaubert's character of Charles Bovary, was a surgeon in practice at Rouen; his mother was connected with some of the oldest Norman families. He was educated in his native city, and did not leave it until 1840, when he came up to Paris to study law. He is said to have been idle at school, but to have been occupied with literature from the age of eleven. Flaubert in his youth "was like a young Greek," full of vigour of body and a certain shy grace, enthusiastic, intensely individual, and apparently without any species of ambition. He loved the country, and Paris was extremely distasteful to him. He made the acquaintance of Victor Hugo, and towards the close of 1840 he travelled in the Pyrenees and Corsica. Returning to Paris, he wasted his time in sombre dreams, living on his patrimony. In 1846, his mother being left quite alone through the deaths of his father and his sister Caroline, Flaubert gladly abandoned Paris and the study of the law together, to make a home for her at Croisset, close to Rouen. This estate, a house in a pleasant piece of ground which ran down to the Seine, became Flaubert's home for the remainder of his life. From 1846 to 1854 he carried on relations with the poetess, Mlle Louise Colet; their letters have been preserved, and according to M. Emile Faguet, this was the only sentimental episode of any importance in the life of Flaubert, who never married. His principal friend at this time was Maxime du Camp, with whom he travelled in Brittany in 1846, and through the East in 1849. Greece and Egypt made a profound impression upon the imagination of Flaubert. From this time forth, save for occasional visits to Paris, he did not stir from Croisset.
On returning from the East, in 1850, he set about the composition of Madame Bovary. He had hitherto scarcely written anything, and had published nothing. The famous novel took him six years to prepare, but was at length submitted to the Revue de Paris, where it appeared in serial form in 1857. The government brought an action against the publisher and against the author, on the charge of immorality, but both were acquitted; and when Madame Bovary appeared in book-form it met with a very warm reception. Flaubert paid a visit to Carthage in 1858, and now settled down to the archaeological studies which were required to equip him for Salammbo, which, however, in spite of the author's ceaseless labours, was not finished until 1862. He then took up again the study of contemporary manners, and, making use of many recollections of his youth and childhood, wrote L'Education sentimentale, the composition of which occupied him seven years; it was published in 1869. Up to this time the sequestered and laborious life of Flaubert had been comparatively happy, but misfortunes began to gather around him. He felt the anguish of the war of 1870 so keenly that the break-up of his health has been attributed to it; he began to suffer greatly from a distressing nervous malady. His best friends were taken from him by death or by fatal misunderstanding; in 1872 he lost his mother, and his circumstances became greatly reduced. He was very tenderly guarded by his niece, Mme Commonville; he enjoyed a rare intimacy of friendship with George Sand, with whom he carried on a correspondence of immense artistic interest, and occasionally he saw his Parisian acquaintances, Zola, A. Daudet, Tourgenieff, the Goncourts; but nothing prevented the close of Flaubert's life from being desolate and melancholy. He did not cease, however, to work with the same intensity and thoroughness. La Tentation de Saint-Antoine, of which fragments had been published as early as 1857, was at length completed and sent to press in 1874. In that year he was subjected to a disappointment by the failure of his drama Le Candidat. In 1877 Flaubert published, in one volume, entitled Trois conies, Un Ceur simple, La Legende de Saint-Julien-l'Hospitalier and Herodias. After this something of his judgment certainly deserted him; he spent the remainder of his life in the toil of building up a vast satire on the futility of human knowledge and the omnipresence of mediocrity, which he left a fragment. This is the depressing and bewildering Bouvard et Pecuchet (posthumously printed, 1881), which, by a curious irony, he believed to be his masterpiece. Flaubert had rapidly and prematurely aged since 1870, and he was quite an old man when he was carried off by a stroke of apoplexy at the age of only 58, on the 8th of May 1880. He died at Croisset, but was buried in the family vault in the cemetery of Rouen. A beautiful monument to him by Chapu was unveiled at the museum of Rouen in 1890.
The personal character of Flaubert offered various peculiarities. He was shy, and yet extremely sensitive and arrogant; he passed from silence to an indignant and noisy flow of language. The same inconsistencies marked his physical nature; he had the build of a guardsman, with a magnificent Viking head, but his health was uncertain from childhood, and he was neurotic to the last degree. This ruddy giant was secretly gnawn by misanthropy and disgust of life. His hatred of the "bourgeois" began in his childhood, and developed into a kind of monomania. He despised his follow-men, their habits, their lack of intelligence, their contempt for beauty, with a passionate scorn which has been compared to that of an ascetic monk. Flaubert's curious modes of composition favoured and were emphasized by these peculiarities. He worked in sullen solitude, sometimes occupying a week in the completion of one page, never satisfied with what he had composed, violently tormenting his brain for the best turn of a phrase, the most absolutely final adjective. It cannot be said that his incessant labours were not rewarded. His private letters show that he was not one of those to whom easy and correct language is naturally given; he gained his extraordinary perfection with the unceasing sweat of his brow. One of the most severe of academic critics admits that "in all his works, and in every page of his works, Flaubert may be considered a model of style." That he was one of the greatest writers who ever lived in France is now commonly admitted, and his greatness principally depends upon the extraordinary vigour and exactitude of his style. Less perhaps than any other writer, not of France, but of modern Europe, Flaubert yields admission to the inexact, the abstract, the vaguely inapt expression which is the bane of ordinary methods of composition. He never allowed a cliche to pass him, never indulgently or wearily went on, leaving behind him a phrase which "almost" expressed his meaning. Being, as he is, a mixture in almost equal parts of the romanticist and the realist, the marvellous propriety of his style has been helpful to later writers of both schools, of every school. The absolute exactitude with which he adapts his expression to his purpose is seen in all parts of his work, but particularly in the portraits he draws of the figures in his principal romances. The degree and manner in which, since his death, the fame of Flaubert has extended, form an interesting chapter of literary history. The publication of Madame Bovary in 1857 had been followed by more scandal than admiration; it was not understood at first that this novel was the beginning of a new thing, the scrupulously truthful portraiture of life. Gradually this aspect of his genius was accepted, and began to crowd out all others. At the time of his death he was famous as a realist, pure and simple. Under this aspect Flaubert exercised an extraordinary influence over E. de Goncourt, Alphonse Daudet and M. Zola. But even since the decline of the realistic school Flaubert has not lost prestige; other facets of his genius have caught the light. It has been perceived that he was not merely realistic, but real; that his clairvoyance was almost boundless; that he saw certain phenomena more clearly than the best of observers had done. Flaubert is a writer who must always appeal more to other authors than to the world at large, because the art of writing, the indefatigable pursuit of perfect expression, were always before him, and because he hated the lax felicities of improvization as a disloyalty to the most sacred procedures of the literary artist.
His Ouvres completes (8 vols., 1885) were printed from the original manuscripts, and included, besides the works mentioned already, the two plays, Le Candidat and Le Chateau des cceurs. Another edition (10 vols.) appeared in 1873-1885. Flaubert's correspondence with George Sand was published in 1884 with an introduction by Guy de Maupassant. Other posthumous works are Par les champs et par les greves (1885), the result of a tour in Brittany; and four volumes of Correspondance (1887-1893). See also Paul Bourget, Essais de psychologie contemporaine (1883); Emile Faguet, Flaubert (1899); Henry James, French Poets and Novelists (1878); Emile Zola, Les Romanciers naturalistes (1881); C. A. Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, vol. xiii., Nouveaux lundis, vol. iv.; and the Souvenirs litteraires (2 vols., 1882-1883) of Maxime du Camp. (E. G.)
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Categories: FIS-FLO | French writers
| Gustave Flaubert | |
|---|---|
| File:Gustave Gustave Flaubert | |
| Born | 12 December 1821 Rouen, France |
| Died | May 8, 1880 (aged 58) Rouen, France |
| Occupation | Novelist, playwright |
| Nationality | French |
| Genres | Fictional prose |
| Literary movement | Realism, Romanticism |
| Influences
| |
| Influenced
| |
Gustave Flaubert (pronounced [gystaːv flobɛːʁ] in French) (December 12, 1821 – May 8, 1880) was a French writer. He is known especially for his first published novel, Madame Bovary (1857). He was very devoted to what he did, and always looked for the word that would best fit the context.
   | Bibliomania page - Bibliomania: Free Online Literature and Study Guides |
| | Flaubert entry at the Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism site - The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism |
| | E-text N° 5115 - The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters by Gustave Flaubert and George Sand - Project Gutenberg |
| | E-text N° 10666 - The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert by Various - Project Gutenberg |
| | Audiobook (mp3) - Daddy rape sister: movie gay youngs, cartoon69 xxx |
| | Flaubert's works - IntraText Digital Library: Author Card: Gustave Flaubert |
| | Flaubert and Madame Bovary: A Double Portrait - Flaubert and Madame Bovary - NYRB Classics |
| | Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour - Penguin Classics - Penguin Group (USA) |
| | some of Gustave Flaubert's works - Cannot find Project Gutenberg Author Flaubert, Gustave |
| | A Simple Soul - A Simple Soul by Gustave Flaubert |
| | Salammbo - Salammbo by Gustave Flaubert |
| | Madame Bovary - Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert |
| | Herodias - Herodias by Gustave Flaubert |
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