"Madame Bovary, c'est moi" ("Madame Bovary is me"): Gustave Flaubert allegedly made the claim about the central character of his foremost novel, "Madame Bovary: Moeurs de province" [provincial manners]. Both were from northern France, though the author was born in Rouen and the character from the city's rural vicinity. Flaubert was the literary bridge between Romanticism and Realism; Emma Bovary had a highly romanticized view of the world, craving beauty, wealth, passion, and high society, but the disparity between her desires and the realities of her rural life led her into two affairs, insurmountable debt, and suicide. In France, this discontent is known as le Bovarysme. He claimed the novel was "a book about nothing, a book dependent on nothing external, which would be held together by the external strength of its style;" also he professed that he was "trying to write harmonious sentences, avoiding assonances." Emma's scond lover, Léon Dupuis, called her "the mistress of all the novels, the heroine of all the dramas, the vague 'she' of all the volumes of verse." The novel was serialized in "La Revue de Paris" between 1 October and 15 December 1856 and led to his trial for obscenity in January. He was acquitted in February 1857, and the novel was published in April, becoming an immediate bestseller.
"Madame Bovary, c'est moi" ("Madame Bovary is me"): Gustave Flaubert allegedly made the claim about the central character of his foremost novel, "Madame Bovary: Moeurs de province" [provincial manners]. Both were from northern France, though the author was born in Rouen and the character from the city's rural vicinity. Flaubert was the literary bridge between Romanticism and Realism; Emma Bovary had a highly romanticized view of the world, craving beauty, wealth, passion, and high society, but the disparity between her desires and the realities of her rural life led her into two affairs, insurmountable debt, and suicide. In France, this discontent is known as le Bovarysme. He claimed the novel was "a book about nothing, a book dependent on nothing external, which would be held together by the external strength of its style;" also he professed that he was "trying to write harmonious sentences, avoiding assonances." Emma's scond lover, Léon Dupuis, called her "the mistress of all the novels, the heroine of all the dramas, the vague 'she' of all the volumes of verse." The novel was serialized in "La Revue de Paris" between 1 October and 15 December 1856 and led to his trial for obscenity in January. He was acquitted in February 1857, and the novel was published in April, becoming an immediate bestseller.
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