Sentimental Education

by Gustave Flaubert, Adrianne Tooke (Translator), Adrianne Tooke (Introduction), Tom Griffith (Editor)

Overview

Sentimental Education has been described both as the first modern novel and as a novel to end all novels. Weaving a poignant love story into his account of the 1848 revolution, Flaubert shows a society in the grip of stereotypes, on every level. There is something farcical in his depiction of characters who aspire to act but are dogged by cliche at every turn.

To a greater extent even than Madame Bovary, Sentimental Education is an indictment of modern consumerism, contrasting the hollowness of material achievement with the lasting beauty of the ideal. Flaubert's study of success and failure offers us a terrible sadness in a terrible beauty, yet is one of the world's great comic masterpieces.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781848704800
Publisher:	Wordsworth Editions, Limited
Publication date:	02/01/2013
Series:	Classics of World Literature
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	480
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Gustave Flaubert was born in Rouen in 1821, the son of a prominent physician. A solitary child, he was attracted to literature at an early age, and after his recovery from a nervous breakdown suffered while a law student, he turned his total energies to writing. 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 form of his work was marked by intense aesthetic scrupulousness and passionate pursuit of le mot juste; its content alternately reflected scorn for French bourgeois society and a romantic taste for exotic historical subject matter. 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. Among fellow writers, however, his reputation was supreme. His circle of friends included Turgenev and the Goncourt brothers, while the young Guy de Maupassant underwent an arduous literary apprenticeship under his direction. Increasing personal isolation and financial insecurity troubled his last years. His final bitterness and disillusion were vividly evidenced in the savagely satiric Bouvard and Pécuchet, left unfinished at his death in 1880.

Robert Baldick translated many volumes from the French for Penguin Classics, including volumes by Diderot, Flaubert, and Verne, and wrote a biography of Huysmans. He died in 1972.

Geoffrey Wall is author of the critically acclaimed Flaubert: A Life and translated Madame Bovary for Penguin Classics.

Table of Contents

Introduction by Louise Bogan
Book I
I. A Promising Episode
II. The Wisdom of Youth
III. The Ruling Passion
IV. The Eternal Feminine
V. A Consuming Love
VI. Hopes Deferred
VII. Paris Again
VIII. Frederick Entertains and Is Entertained
IX. The Family Friend
X. A Pleasant Little Dinner
XI. A Duel
XII. Little Louise Becomes a Woman
XIII. Rosanette in a New Rôle
Book II
XIV. Revolutionary Days
XV. Louise Is Disillusioned
XVI. Three Charming Women
XVII. Frederick's Betrothal
XVIII. Under the Hammer
XIX. After Many Years
XX. When a Man's Forty

Editorial Reviews

Many listeners would give this work a 9 or a 10--and just as many a 1 or a 2. A nineteenth-century French novel suffused with lots of talk and much less action, it's about a new law student, the impoverished Frederic Moreau, and his vain attempts to secure the intimacy of Madame Arnoux. Its myriad conversations will not appeal to everyone. Reader Michael Maloney, however, will receive high marks from all. He consistently differentiates well among characters, handles French like a Parisian, and earnestly attempts to make the colloquies palatable. Still, listeners should be warned: This is no MADAME BOVARY. T.H. © AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine

JUN/JUL 03 - AudioFile