Review of Madame Bovary (1856)
Gustave Flaubert (writer).
I read this in Swedish for a 2002 course. It was fun to see such a landmark of realism after a fairly linear walk through everything that preceded it, and the psychological objectivity is of the sort that may reasonably train empathy, but it has never occurred to me to read a modern novel with similar subject matter. The deep realism forbids, for instance, the murder plot and generational symbols of Le Père Goriot (1835). At the same time, Flaubert’s restraint in his realism is productive. Den orörliga lågan: Analyser av femton 1900-talsdikter (1991) paraphrases—in Swedish—his protest to a proposed illustrated edition of Madame Bovary, and I will translate that paraphrase here: “This illustrator, he would restore everything that I have eliminated?”