Madame Bovary (Bantam Classics)
Gustave Flaubert
Language: English
Pages: 512
ISBN: 0553213415
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
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.
To Have and To Hold (Bride Veil Island, Book 1)
Death, Taxes, and a Skinny No-Whip Latte (A Tara Holloway Novel, Book 2)
stood dazzled before the golden spiral beneath which he was hidden, and felt her ardour redouble for this man more bandaged than a Scythian, and splendid as one of the Magi. He had fine ideas about Emma’s tomb. First he proposed a broken column with some drapery, next a pyramid, then a Temple of Vesta, a sort of rotunda, or else a “mass of ruins.” And in all his plans Homais always stuck to the weeping willow, which he looked upon as the indispensable symbol of sorrow. Charles and he made a
unspoken. “Whom” in this context carries the sense of the second-person plural, i.e., “You,” as Robert Fitzgerald suggests in his translation: “You will get from me—But first to calm the rough sea.” 4 (p. 14) became enthusiastic about Béranger: Jean-Pierre Béranger (1780-1857) was a popular French poet whom Flaubert particularly despised. Flaubert described Béranger as “this dirty bourgeois who sings his simple-minded love songs.” Charles’s enthusiasm for Béranger is an indication of his limited
as something of a victim, and she is oppressed most by her own powers of self-destruction. Her unlikability and lack of discretion become sources of sympathy for her, as in Flaubert’s original. Chabrol’s Madame Bovary won an Oscar for costume design. COMMENTS & QUESTIONS In this section, we aim to provide the reader with an array of perspectives on the text, as well as questions that challenge those perspectives. The commentary has been culled from sources as diverse as reviews
without curtains, while a kneading-trough took up the side by the window, one pane of which was mended with a piece of blue paper. In the corner behind the door, shining hob-nailed shoes stood in a row under the slab of the wash-stand, near a bottle of oil with a feather stuck in its mouth; a Matthieu Laensbergh lay on the dusty mantelpiece amid gunflints, candle-ends, and bits of amadou. Finally, the last luxury in the apartment was a “Fame” blowing her trumpets, a picture cut out, no doubt,
table with his back resting against the wall. Madame Bovary began taking off his cravat. The strings of his shirt had got into a knot, and she was for some minutes moving her light fingers about the young fellow’s neck. Then she poured some vinegar on her cambric handkerchief; she moistened his temples with little dabs, and then blew upon them softly. The ploughman revived, but Justin’s syncope still lasted, and his eyeballs disappeared in their pale sclerotic like blue flowers in milk. “We
