Powerpoint presentation on Gustave Flaubert for UI Eng 258 by Laura Wilson.

1. Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)
By Laura Wilson

2. Early Life
• Born in Rouen, France on 12 December
1821
• Born into a family of Doctors
• 5 Siblings
• Started writing at the age of 14
• Brilliant/talented student
• Sad upbringing
• Gustave was very lonely and turned to
writing and literature as a way to cope
• Epilepsy(?)
• When Gustave was 22 years old he started
having fits in which we think today was
most likely episepsy

3. Education
• 1830s-attended College Royal de
Rouen
• Writing for the newspaper
• Read shakespear
• Fell in love with Elisa Schlesinger
• She was an older women and married
• 1840-unseccesfully studied Law in
Paris
• His parents wanted him to become a
lawyer
• Traveled while writing

4. Madame Bovary
• Madame Bovary was published in 1856
when Gustave got back from Egypt. It took
him 5 years to write.
• Gustave was put on trial for the context that
was in the book
• The realism of the character and the explicit
context was very new to the French people.
• Gustave ended up winning the trial
• After that his novel was well received by the
public and became his most famous novel
• “Bovarysm”
• Madame Bovary was the first novel to be called
Bovarysm
• Bovarysm means escaping, dreaming, as if the
reader is being sucked into the story, or plot,
and therefore ignores reality

5. What made his writing great?
• Gustave had many forms of writing style
• French Poet
• Essayist
• Art critic
• Psychological analysis
• The characters in his novels had a depth within
them.
• Perfectionist
• Gustave was very particular about what he wrote.
Most of his novels and books took him many years
at a time to write.
• Realism
• The characters in his novels had an aspect of
realism to them. They would be characters that one
could imagine as real or even relate to.
Accurate look at behavior
• Individuals
• Society

6. Other Novels
• The Temptation of Saint
Anthony – 1857
• Salammbô – 1862
• 4 years
• L'Éducation sentimentale – 1869
• 7 years

7. Later Life
• In 1870 Flaubert became very sick.
His health declined.
• Ironically after all of his explicit novels he
got syphilis which is an STD
• He died from a brain hemorrhage in
1880
• Buried Rouen Cemetery in Normandy
• The realistic/romantic writer is still
read today and the influences of
Madame Bovary and some of his other
writings, no doubt, changed the way
people not only read, but wrote as
well. He was a catalyst for French
literature and realism.