Gustave Flaubert Bicentennial on Culturethèque

The year 2021 marks the bicentennial anniversary of the birth of Gustave Flaubert, one of France’s most famous and influential writers, and the leader of the literary realism movement, who is perhaps best-known in the English-speaking world for his debut novel, Madame Bovary. Throughout the year, Normandy, the region of his birthplace, will host a number of events to celebrate Flaubert’s bicentenary including exhibitions, dramatized walking tours, and educational activities. Flaubert’s attachment to Normandy – in particular Rouen, where he was born and did much of his writing – makes him an important figure in this region’s history.

You can discover many of Gustave Flaubert’s renowned books and publications on your AFSF Culturethèque e-library. Madame Bovary takes place in provincial northern France, exploring the questionable actions of the main character Emma Bovary who lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life. Flaubert’s L'Éducation Sentimentale, praised by contemporaries such as George Sand and Émile Zola, focuses on the romantic life of a young man at the time of the French Revolution of 1848. Be sure to explore these titles and many others including Flaubert’s Dictionnaire des Idées Reçues, a short satirical work, lampooning the clichés endemic to French society under the Second French Empire. Or you can also discover biographies of Flaubert’s life thoughtfully researched and written by admiring authors such as Regis Jauffret and Jacques Chessex. The creative writing style of Regis Jauffret makes learning about the famous author entertaining in his novel-biography entitled Le Dernier Bain de Gustave Flaubert as it literally plunges you into the life and mind of the genius of realism. It opens on the morning of May 8, 1880 when Gustave Flaubert took a bath and died shortly after in his study of a stroke, presumably preceded by one of his usual epileptic seizures. Lying in the water, Flaubert reviews his childhood, his youth, his dreams as a young man, and even his books whose heroines and heroes come to visit him.

Visit the AFSF Library page for instructions on how to sign up for the Culturethèque e-library.  Bonne lecture par et sur Gustave Flaubert !



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