Flaubert

Michel Winock; Nicholas Elliott (trans.)

ISBN 10: 0674737954 / ISBN 13: 9780674737952

Published by The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2016

1st printing (2016). 549pp. Near Fine/Near Fine copy, publisher's press release laid in, now preserved in archival jacket protector. Seller Inventory # 023671

Synopsis:

Michel Winock s biography situates Gustave Flaubert s life and work in France s century of great democratic transition. Flaubert did not welcome the egalitarian society predicted by Tocqueville. Wary of the masses, he rejected the universal suffrage hard won by the Revolution of 1848, and he was exasperated by the nascent socialism that promoted the collective to the detriment of the individual. But above all, he hated the bourgeoisie. Vulgar, ignorant, obsessed with material comforts, impervious to beauty, the French middle class embodied for Flaubert every vice of the democratic age. His loathing became a fixation and a source of literary inspiration.

Flaubert depicts a man whose personality, habits, and thought are a stew of paradoxes. The author of Madame Bovary and Sentimental Education spent his life inseparably bound to solitude and melancholy, yet he enjoyed periodic escapes from his hole in Croisset to pursue a variety of pleasures: fervent friendships, society soirees, and a whirlwind of literary and romantic encounters. He prided himself on the impersonality of his writing, but he did not hesitate to use material from his own life in his fiction. Nowhere are Flaubert s contradictions more evident than in his politics. An enemy of power who held no nostalgia for the monarchy or church, he was nonetheless hostile to collectivist utopias.

Despite declarations of the timelessness and sacredness of Art, Flaubert could not transcend the era he abominated. Rejecting the modern world, he paradoxically became its celebrated chronicler and the most modern writer of his time.

About the Author: Michel Winock is Professor Emeritus at the Institut d études politiques de Paris (Sciences-Po).

Bibliographic Details

Title: Flaubert
Publisher: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Publication Date: 2016
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Near Fine
Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
Edition: 1st Edition