FRE 341: 19th-Century French Novel

As the first book-length examination of the Madame Bovary adaptations, this volume, in addition to its pedagogical applications, will be a useful reference for scholars of literature and film and for those interested in the burgeoning field of adaptation studies. Madame Bovary at the Movies avoids value judgments based on the notion of fidelity to the novel. In-depth analyses are reserved for the studio films of Renoir, Minnelli and Chabrol and the small-screen adaptation of Fywell.

After its succès de scandale in France in 1856, Flaubert's Madame Bovary was widely adapted, sometimes so closely they were dismissed as plagiarism yet they achieved canonical status in their national traditions. This study traces Madame Bovary's journey abroad and asks why the novel was given such import in foreign literatures.

This book is an introduction to the reading of a major work by Gustave Flaubert: Madame Bovary. The reader of this book will find a detailed summary of the novel, followed by an analysis of the main characters and core themes, and then a reflection on questions of style and technique.

As Dacia Maraini argues, Madame Bovary is one of the most problematic, though fascinating, female protagonists in modern literature. In this lively, learned, and very personal study, Maraini explores the profound and contradictory relationship between the writer Flaubert and the character his readers have grown to love. Maraini argues that in their desire to claim Emma Bovary as a standard-bearer of revolt, women have often overlooked the way in which Flaubert evokes Emma's insignificance and vulgarity.

Frank D. McConnell discusses Madame Bovary in conjunction with Flaubert's Dictionary of Received Ideas, while Margaret Lowe suggestively compares Emma with Psyche and other mythic figures. These and other varied approaches reveal the multifaceted nature of Emma Bovary, one of the richest characters in one of the greatest novels in Western Literature.

Stephen Heath shows how Madame Bovary captures and articulates a fundamental experience of the post-romantic, commercial-industrial, emotional-democratic period. He explains how Madame Bovary represents Flaubert's intense personal engagement with the tragedy of bourgeois culture, while at the same time exemplyfying the author's commitment to the impersonality of art and the transcendence of style. The novel is set in its literary and historical context and there is a guide to further reading.