Madame Bovary

by Gustave Flaubert, Mildred Marmur (Translator), Robin Morgan (Introduction), Frederick Brown (Afterword)

Overview

As a provocative tale of passion and complacency, ideals and self-delusions, Madame Bovary (1857) remains a milestone in European fiction. In telling his story of Emma Bovary—a farmer’s daughter who, with girlhood dreams fuelled by sensational novels, marries a provincial doctor—Flaubert inaugurated a literary mode that would be called Realism. But so exacting were Flaubert’s standards of authenticity that his portrayal of the breakdown of Emma’s marriage, and the frankness with which he treats her adulterous liaisons, scandalized many of his contemporaries. Yet to others, the mix of painful introspection, emotional blindness, and cynical self-seeking that distinguishes his characters made the novel instantly recognizable as a work of genius. It is a novel fixed upon the idea of romance—of the need for Romance—in the face of day-to-day banalities. It is a theme that is ironic insofar as the exquisite clarity of Flaubert’s prose serves to hauntingly underline the futility of the heroine’s ultimate tragedy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780451418500
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	12/31/2012
Series:	Signet Classics
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	464
Product dimensions:	4.20(w) x 6.72(h) x 1.23(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Gustave Flaubert (1821–80) was attracted to literature at an early age, and after his recovery from a nervous breakdown suffered while a law student, he turned his total energies to writing. Aside from journeys to the Near East, Greece, Italy, and North Africa and a stormy liaison with the poet Louise Colet, his life was dedicated to the practice of his art. The success of Madame Bovary (1857) was marred by government prosecution for “immorality.” Salammbô (1862) and The Sentimental Education (1869) received a cool public reception. Not until the publication of Three Tales (1877) was his genius popularly acknowledged. Among fellow writers, however, his reputation was supreme. His final bitterness and disillusion were vividly evidenced in the savagely satiric Bouvard and Pécuchet, left unfinished at his death.

An award-winning writer, feminist leader, political theorist, journalist, and editor, Robin Morgan has published seventeen books, including six of poetry, two of fiction, and the classic anthologies Sisterhood Is Powerful and Sisterhood Is Global. A founder of contemporary U.S. feminism, she has also been a leader in the international women’s movement for twenty-five years, and she is the author of a book of poetry, A Hot January: Poems 1996–1999, and the acclaimed Saturday’s Child: A Memoir. In 1990, as Editor-in-Chief of Ms., she relaunched the magazine as an international, award-winning bimonthly free of advertising, then resigned in 1993 to become Consulting Editor. A recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Prize (Poetry), the Front Page Award for Distinguished Journalism, the Feminist Majority Foundation Award, and numerous other honors, she lives in New York City.

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Part One
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Excerpted from "Madame Bovary"
by .
Copyright © 2012 Gustave Flaubert.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
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What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Madame Bovary is like the railroad stations erected in its epoch: graceful, even floral, but cast of iron." — John Updike

Editorial Reviews

Possibly the most beautifully written book ever composed [and] the most important novel of the century.”—Frank O’Connor

“Perhaps we identify with Emma because we too feel an emptiness at the center of things—an emptiness we try to fill with books, with fantasies, with sex, with things. Her yearning is nothing more or less than the human condition in the modern world. Her search for ecstasy is ours.”—Erica Jong

From the Publisher

Kate Reading narrates Davis's tightly woven and highly accessible new translation of Flaubert's 1857 literary classic, in which the title character, a middle-class, bored, self-centered woman who is desperately seeking a purpose in life, instead finds herself in a destructive arc. Both translator and reader have won numerous awards for their respective previous works, and this collaboration results in an audio performance that is both polished and engaging. Warmly recommended for any non-French speaker interested in literary classics. [Alternate recordings of previous translations are available from Blackstone Audio, as read by Simon Vance, and from Tantor Audio, as read by Donada Peters.—Ed.]—I. Pour-El, Des Moines Area Community Coll., Boone, IA

Library Journal

There’s much to admire in this production, yet it’s difficult to recommend. Its pace, more leaden than leisurely, is only the most obvious problem. Narrator Ronald Pickup skillfully distinguishes each character, but he invests the same energy in describing the agricultural fair as he does in delivering Emma's intimate conversations. Madame Bovary is considered a masterpiece in part because of Flaubert's command of detail, but here Pickup is so entranced with the minutiae that he loses his balance. His main characters are crudely drawn, especially the manipulative Rodolphe, in sad contrast to the lovely miniatures he so deftly paints of the village inhabitants. After a while, a mere coatrack can seem heavy with portent, and the listener feels the storyteller has lost sight of Emma's story—perhaps even of Emma herself. J.L.B. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2008 - AudioFile