F. Brown, Flaubert. A Biography

BROWN, Frederick, Flaubert. A Biography, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2007, 640 p.
ISBN 13 978-0-674-02537-0
ISBN 10 0-674-02537-7


RÉSUMÉ

In this riveting landmark biography, Frederick Brown illuminates the life and career of the author of Madame Bovary. He describes Flaubert's fraught relationship with his longtime mistress Louise Colet, his liaisons with many other women, and his friendships with luminaries such as Turgenev and Zola. Here too is Brown's description of Flaubert's meticulous compositional habits, his painstaking search for the sentence that is deeply, rhythmically right.
Brown brings his subject remarkably and fully to life, illuminating not only the novelist but also his milieu--the Paris and Normandy of the revolution of 1848 and of the Second Empire--with arresting clarity and a deepening sense of Flaubert's time and place. Flaubert is a sophisticated, thorough, and utterly absorbing re-creation of the life and times of the man who is arguably the architect of the modern novel.


BIOGRAPHIE

Frederick Brown is Professor Emeritus at the Department of European Languages and Literatures, the State University of New York at Stonybrook. He is the author of the classic biography of Zola.