Gustave Flaubert

Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) was a French novelist and master stylist whose work helped define literary realism. His major works include Madame Bovary, Sentimental Education, Salammbo, Three Tales, and Bouvard and Pecuchet. Flaubert matters because he pursued exactness of style with almost religious severity, seeking le mot juste, the precise word that would make prose artistically inevitable. Madame Bovary exposed provincial boredom, romantic illusion, consumer desire, and moral emptiness with such force that it led to an obscenity trial and became a landmark of the modern novel. Flaubert's letters also reveal his extreme discipline, disgust with bourgeois complacency, and devotion to art. His quotes endure because they make the artist's life feel both exalted and punishing: ordered in habit, violent in imagination, and intoxicated with language. His example still defines the costs and discipline of artistic exactness.

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