Gustave Flaubert

Gustave Flaubert was a French writer often called the creator of the modern novel. He was born on December 12, 1821, in Rouen, where his father was chief physician at one of the local hospitals. From 1823 to 1840 Flaubert studied at the Royal College of Rouen, where he did not achieve particular success, but showed an interest in history and a great love of literature. He read not only the fashionable Romantic writers of the time, but also Cervantes and Shakespeare. At school he met the future poet L. Bouilhet (1822–1869), who became his faithful friend for life.

In 1840 Flaubert was sent to Paris to study law. After three years of study, he was unable to pass his examinations, but he did make friends with the writer and journalist M. Du Camp (1822–1894), who became his traveling companion. In 1843 Flaubert was diagnosed with a nervous disorder similar to epilepsy, and he was prescribed a sedentary way of life. After his father’s death in 1846, he returned to the estate of Croisset near Rouen, cared for his mother, and devoted himself mainly to literature. Fortunately, he had a fortune that spared him the need to earn his living by the pen or by any other means. Equally, he was able to fulfill his dream of travel and devote many years to writing a single novel. He perfected his style with the utmost care, interrupting his work only for professional conversations with the Goncourt brothers, I. Taine, É. Zola, G. de Maupassant, and I. S. Turgenev. Even his celebrated love affair with the poet Louise Colet was bound up with literature, and in their extensive correspondence the main topic was literary problems.

Flaubert was brought up on the works of F. Chateaubriand and V. Hugo and was inclined toward a Romantic mode of representation. Throughout his life he sought to suppress the lyrical-romantic element in himself in favor of the most objective depiction of everyday reality. Having begun to write at an early age, he soon became aware of the conflict between his chosen aim and the inclinations of his nature. The first of his published novels was Madame Bovary (185