In 1853 Flaubert wrote that his work on Madame Bovary was going slowly because his personality had never been of less use to him. On another occasion he stated he was Madame Bovary. Some critics take Madame Bovary to be a text about texts. Others believe Madam Bovary is merely proof that some people should never learn to read. This edition takes account of the controversies surrounding both Madame Bovary and Madame Bovary, and so includes 12 new critical essays, transcripts of Flaubert's obscenity trial, and a new introduction by Cohen (French and Italian, Stanford U.) Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Margaret Cohen's careful editorial revision modernizes and renews Flaubert's stylistic masterpiece. In addition, Cohen has added to the Second Edition a new introduction, substantially new annotations, and twenty-one striking images, including photographs and engravings, that inform students' understanding of middle-class life in nineteenth-century provincial France.In Madame Bovary, Flaubert created a cogent counter discourse that exposed and resisted the dominant intellectual and social ideologies of his age. The novel's subversion of conventional moral norms inevitably created controversy and eventually led to Flaubert's prosecution by the French government on charges of offending "public and religious morality." This Norton edition is the only one available that includes the complete manuscript from Flaubert's 1857 trial."Criticism" includes sixteen studies regarding the novel's central themes, twelve of them new to the Second Edition, including essays by Charles Baudelaire, Henry James, Roland Barthes, Jonathan Culler, and Naomi Schor.A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.
The text of this Norton Critical Edition is based on Eleanor Marx Aveling's celebrated translation, revised by Paul de Man.
