English 24

Freshman Seminar: Reading Madame Bovary

Book List

Flaubert, Gustave: Madame Bovary

Description

Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary is widely regarded as one of the world’s classic novels, but that acclaim does not get at what’s uniquely weird about it.  Read the novel fast and you’ll find a compelling story that is a pleasure to follow.  Read it slow and you’ll find a strange, disturbing, and even more compelling style that is always interfering with the narrative flow.  Do both—and that is what we’ll be doing in this seminar—and you’ll discover that “off” relation between story and style which inaugurates modernism in fiction.

For consistency’s sake, students are asked to read the novel only in Lydia Davis’ excellent new translation (Penguin, 2011).

This 1-unit course may not be counted as one of the twelve courses required to complete the English major.

Other Recent Sections of This Course