Gustave Flaubert

by David Roe

Published 1 June 1989
This examination of the work of Flaubert suggests that he alternated between an attraction for lofty themes and seriousness against an attraction for the real and everyday. It also explores the field of reinterpretation provided by Flaubert to critics and practising novelists. In the generaitons immediately preceding and following 1914, the novel underwent a radical redefinition of its nature and possibilities. This series is concerned with those writers who have, whether thematically, structurally or stylistically extended the boundaries of fiction in response to the modern world and have thus modified the tradition of the novel. The books are introductory and assume no previous knowledge of the subjectm and aim to chart the radical changes that have taken place in the genre.