{"id":148,"date":"2009-11-15T07:51:43","date_gmt":"2009-11-15T11:51:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/?p=146"},"modified":"2009-11-15T07:51:43","modified_gmt":"2009-11-15T11:51:43","slug":"french-literature-madame-bovary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/french-literature-madame-bovary\/","title":{"rendered":"French Literature – Madame Bovary"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was basically introduced to French literature during my third year in college which I spent in Paris studying the Cours de Civilisation Fran\u00e7aise<\/em> offered at the Sorbonne through Central College Abroad<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Although it felt like I was never going to get it in the beginning, with help from the teachers at the Sorbonne and my French friends, I unlocked the treasure chest that is French literature.\u00a0 One of my very favorites is Madame Bovary.\u00a0 I’m not sure why really, but I fell in love with this novel by Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880).\u00a0 One of my favorite excerpts is when Emma Rouault (the main character) discovers her new home three days after her wedding to the widowed Charles Bovary, a very shy, uninteresting and insensitive man she had just recently met.\u00a0 The reader becomes Emma as the description is thoroughly made from her perspective.\u00a0 The detailed adjectives and nouns make for impressive imagery as Flaubert uses objects instead of emotions to show who his characters are.\u00a0 It’s heart-breaking to feel just like Emma, the only daughter of a rich Normand farmer, as she discovers a home that her new husband had not even prepared for her, having left it just as his first wife (who Emma refers to as l’autre<\/em>) had decorated it and which as far as Emma is concerned is old, dirty and of poor taste (un papier jaune-serin, des fleurs p\u00e2les, la toile mal tendue, flambeaux d’argent plaqu\u00e9, bois de sapin, une grande pi\u00e8ce d\u00e9labr\u00e9e…)<\/em>.\u00a0 My favorite line in this chapter is: …Emma songeait \u00e0 son bouquet de mariage, qui \u00e9tait emball\u00e9 dans un carton, et se demandait, en r\u00eavant, ce qu’on en ferait, si par hasard elle venait \u00e0 mourir.<\/em><\/p>\n

Flaubert apparently wrote this story after having read about a young woman who cheated on and was later murdered by her husband.\u00a0 Hence, the fact that Emma later commits suicide which is presaged in this line I quoted.<\/p>\n

I encourage all my readers to open up a French novel and read just a little excerpt.\u00a0 Use a dictionary if you really need to, but only for the words that really block your general understanding of the story.\u00a0 Don’t waste time looking up each and every one of the words you don’t know as this will frustrate you before you even finish one sentence.\u00a0 And after all, the most important thing is that you get a general idea of the plot or the action as that will be enough to keep you wanting to go back for more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was basically introduced to French literature during my third year in college which I spent in Paris studying the Cours de Civilisation Fran\u00e7aise offered at the Sorbonne through Central College Abroad. Although it felt like I was never going to get it in the beginning, with help from the teachers at the Sorbonne and…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[253,270,375,397],"class_list":["post-148","post","type-post","status-publish","hentry","category-culture","tag-explanation-of-madame-bovary","tag-flaubert","tag-french-novels","tag-french-reading"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}