Madame Bovary: Vol 10 (Collector's Library) - Hardcover

Flaubert, Gustave

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1904633099 ISBN 13: 9781904633099

Publisher: Macmillan Collector's Library, 2003

Synopsis

Emma Bovary is beautiful and bored, trapped in a marriage to a mediocre doctor and stifled by the banality of provincial life. An ardent reader of sentimental novels, she longs for passion and seeks escape in fantasies of high romance, voracious spending and eventually, adultery.

About this title

Review:

"[Flaubert's] masterwork has been given the English translation it deserves." -Kathryn Harrison, The New York Times Book Review "[A] brilliant new translation." -Lee Siegel, The New York Observer "[Davis] has a finer ear for the natural cadences of English, in narrative and dialogue, than any of her predecessors, and there are many moments in her Madame Bovary when one pauses to admire how clean and spare a sentence seems by comparison with its earlier translated versions. . . . Only a very good writer indeed could have written it. . . . The bones of the original French show clearly through her English, and the rawness of her translation is, on the whole, invigorating." -Jonathan Raban, The New York Review of Books "How tickled Madame Bovary herself would be by the latest homage paid to her. . . . I'm grateful to Davis for luring me back to Madame Bovary and for giving us a version which strikes me as elegant and alive." -Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air "Flaubert's obsessive masterpiece finally gets the obsessive translation it deserves." -New York

From the Back Cover:

The year 1857 propelled Flaubert into the law courts and into celebrity. It was not exactly the kind of celebrity he had wished for. 'Madame Bovary' had appeared serially in 'La Revue de Paris'. Now the imperial prosecutor was attacking the work for being offensive to religion and morality. Not only the seduction scenes, but the episodes dealing with religion and the description of Emma's death, came under direct censure. More than the subject, the general tone of the novel was denounced as immoral: the pervasive eroticism, the poetry of adultery, the so-called 'realism' of the style. Flaubert, excellently defended by his lawyer, was acquitted. The book was published soon after, benefiting from the advance courtroom publicity.

About this edition

• Publisher: Macmillan Collector's Library
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1904633099
• ISBN 13: 9781904633099
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 432