Gustave Flaubert
Author(s): Anne Green
In this new critical biography, Anne Green draws on Flaubert's voluminous correspondence and unpublished manuscripts to reveal the extent to which his writing was haunted by traumatic early experiences. She weaves discussion of his work into an intimate account of Flaubert's life and volatile character, following him from his childhood in Rouen to his student days in Paris, from his extensive travels through North Africa to the imperial court of Napoleon III. Green pays special attention to Flaubert's close family relationships, love-affairs, and friendships with literary figures, including Turgenev, Sand, Zola, Maupassant, and the Goncourt brothers. This concise and informative biography is a must-read for lovers of literature everywhere.
Product Information
"Having famously stated, 'I would like to drown humanity in my vomit,' Flaubert would have despised the many ways his work has been absorbed into popular culture. His legacy, however, goes far beyond such easy commercial exploitation as Bovary beauty products, sci-fi adaptations, and interactive computer games. Flaubert changed the course of literature; thus, his outsize personality, life, and genius matter. . . . Green captures in just 175 pages the essence of one of the most iconoclastic and important figures in literary history. Published in the excellent Critical Lives series, this richly researched, compact, even minimalist study offers an intimate portrait of a volatile, melancholy man haunted by traumatic experiences, extravagant tastes, and lifelong self-doubt. Using published and unpublished sources, Green reveals Flaubert’s intellectual and emotional life in short, telling anecdotes about his travels, relationships with family and friends, and the unremitting, often overwhelming struggles he faced when writing. Some three-dozen judiciously selected images complete this magnificently concise portrait of a complicated man who never got his wish 'to be forgotten, to be left in peace, never to be talked about' but might just have read this biography with approval. . . . Essential."
– Choice (JC BookGrocer)
General Fields
- :
- : Reaktion Books, Limited
- : Reaktion Books, Limited
- : November 2017
- : .5 Inches X 5 Inches X 7.75 Inches
- : books
Special Fields
- : 208
- : 843.8
- : Paperback
- : Anne Green