Madame Bovary (Penguin Hardback Classics)
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Product Description
Product Description
A major new translation of one of the most popular classics of all time, in a beautiful new edition.
Emma Bovary is beautiful and bored, trapped in her marriage to a mediocre doctor and stifled by the banality of provincial life. An ardent reader of sentimental novels, she longs for passion and seeks escape in fantasies of high romance, in voracious spending and, eventually, in adultery. But even her affairs bring her disappointment and the consequences are devastating. Flaubert's erotically charged and psychologically acute portrayal of Emma Bovary caused a moral outcry on its publication in 1857. It was deemed so lifelike that many women claimed they were the model for his heroine; but Flaubert insisted: 'Madame Bovary, c'est moi'.
About the Author
Gustave Flaubert was born in Rouen in 1821. Aside from journeys to the Near East, Greece, Italy, and North Africa, and a stormy liaison with the poetess Louise Colet, his life was dedicated to the practice of his art. The success of Madame Bovary (1857) was ensured by government prosecution for "immorality"; Salammbô (1862) and The Sentimental Education (1869) received a cool public reception; not until the publication of Three Tales (1877) was his genius popularly acknowledged. His final bitterness and disillusion were vividly evidenced in the savagely satiric Bouvard and Pécuchet, left unfinished at his death in 1880.
Lydia Davis is the author of one novel and several collections of short fiction. She is also the translator of numerous works from the French by, among others, Maurice Blanchot, Pierre Jean Jouve and Michel Leiris, and was recently named a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government. She received great acclaim for her translation of Proust's The Way by Swann's for Penguin Classics and her Collected Stories have just been published by Hamish Hamilton.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Madame Bovary is a brilliant book, one of the best written books i've ever read alongside lolita and some of faulkner's writing Flaubert's is breathtaking. The novel itself is brilliant and i don't think i need to say anymore because the book is arguably one of the most famous novels ever written. This version of the book itself i received as a christmas present, expecting a penguin edition but got this and am so glad. This translation i think really does justice to flaubert's writing. Although i can't speak french that well and have only read a bit of other translations, whereas the text in other editions seemed clunky and jarred, the writing in this edition was much more fluid and beautiful. Therefore the book is great, the translation is great, what more do you want.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
17 reviews
23 of 28 people found the following review helpful
WOW!
3 Dec 2010
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
This new translation is an absolute masterpiece and a treasure. The prose is so profound, you will find yourself re-reading paragraphs and sentences over and over again to savor both the writing, and the thoughts expressed. It has been said that a "classic" is a book that withstands the "test of time." Curiously, besides meeting that definition, this book is also "timeless" as it could have been written yesterday as regards marriage, relationships, and human nature. In that regard, particularly for the baby boomers, with such a high divorce rate, it is a lesson for us all about when is "good enough, good enough," or, alternatively, the grass is not always greener on the other side.
25 of 32 people found the following review helpful
FORMIDABLE!
11 Nov 2010
Format:Hardcover
What a wonderful novel! I've been meaning to read it all my life and am so glad I finally did! As the jacket says, Emma Bovary is the original desperate housewife. You don't "like" her, but you know her, and this cautionary tale is a masterful study of love and passion and foolishness. The very end is brilliant. Gustave Flaubert worked famously -- painstakingly -- hard on every sentence, and translator Lydia Davis does him justice. Allez-y. Jump in.
14 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Davis Redeems this Masterpiece!
17 Mar 2011
Format:Hardcover
I read Madame Bovary twenty years ago and was thoroughly unimpressed. I passed it off as one of those "classics" that everyone reads, for some reason, but no one really enjoys. Then, in October I heard a review of Davis' newly published translation, and how she endeavored to keep to Flaubert's deliberate and precise style. I was fascinated. I had never considered that the reason I didn't like the novel, was due to the translation.
I read Davis' translation with a copy of a previous translation at hand, making comparisons. I was amazed at what a difference just a word could make, how it could change the whole feeling of the sentence. Thanks to Davis, I was able to immerse myself in Flaubert's painstaking, detailed writing and come away in awe of his ability to turn a phrase.
The plot of Madame Bovary is familiar to many: Emma is a spoiled, vain young woman who spends too much time with her head in novels and, as a result, expects--no demands!--that life, romance especially, be like it is in her books. After her marriage, she becomes depressed that there is no "grand passion", and this leads to restlessness and eventually to affairs. Her husband, Charles, is blind to Emma's dissatisfaction, flaws and infidelity; he worships her very belongings. Emma takes advantage of Charles' love-blindness in a variety of ways, including running up a debt so severe that it bankrupts him.
In the midst of all this drama, Flaubert has the reader stand back, just slightly emotionally detached. One can't feel fully compassionate for Charles, because Flaubert shows him as a buffoon and sometimes as an idiot. One can't sympathize with Emma, because Flaubert delights in holding her vices up to the light. He also interjects bits of every day life from the townspeople, as another way to keep the reader from being overly focused on the crises of the Bovarys, and he paints all the working class with a brush laden with boorishness, and the upper class as heavy handed snobs. It's hard not to feel superior to many of these characters, and I believe that was Flaubert's intention--to keep the reader from forming an attachment to any character and thereby keeping the book from being a "moral tale". There is no moral here, it simply is.
It's rare to say that a book with a disagreeable plot is fantastic, but if the writer is good enough no matter what the subject (think Nabokov and his Lolita), the reader will be swept away by the sheer force of the words. This is the case with Flaubert and Madame Bovary--thanks to Davis' excellent translation.
If you've ever tried to read it and failed, or wanted to read it and just haven't, now is the time. Other translators did an injustice to Flaubert. Lydia Davis has redeemed this masterpiece for the English language.
I read Davis' translation with a copy of a previous translation at hand, making comparisons. I was amazed at what a difference just a word could make, how it could change the whole feeling of the sentence. Thanks to Davis, I was able to immerse myself in Flaubert's painstaking, detailed writing and come away in awe of his ability to turn a phrase.
The plot of Madame Bovary is familiar to many: Emma is a spoiled, vain young woman who spends too much time with her head in novels and, as a result, expects--no demands!--that life, romance especially, be like it is in her books. After her marriage, she becomes depressed that there is no "grand passion", and this leads to restlessness and eventually to affairs. Her husband, Charles, is blind to Emma's dissatisfaction, flaws and infidelity; he worships her very belongings. Emma takes advantage of Charles' love-blindness in a variety of ways, including running up a debt so severe that it bankrupts him.
In the midst of all this drama, Flaubert has the reader stand back, just slightly emotionally detached. One can't feel fully compassionate for Charles, because Flaubert shows him as a buffoon and sometimes as an idiot. One can't sympathize with Emma, because Flaubert delights in holding her vices up to the light. He also interjects bits of every day life from the townspeople, as another way to keep the reader from being overly focused on the crises of the Bovarys, and he paints all the working class with a brush laden with boorishness, and the upper class as heavy handed snobs. It's hard not to feel superior to many of these characters, and I believe that was Flaubert's intention--to keep the reader from forming an attachment to any character and thereby keeping the book from being a "moral tale". There is no moral here, it simply is.
It's rare to say that a book with a disagreeable plot is fantastic, but if the writer is good enough no matter what the subject (think Nabokov and his Lolita), the reader will be swept away by the sheer force of the words. This is the case with Flaubert and Madame Bovary--thanks to Davis' excellent translation.
If you've ever tried to read it and failed, or wanted to read it and just haven't, now is the time. Other translators did an injustice to Flaubert. Lydia Davis has redeemed this masterpiece for the English language.
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