Professor David Peimer
Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert’s Masterpiece: More than a Novel About the Eternal Love Triangle?
Summary
Professor David Peimer discusses Madame Bovary, the 1857 novel by French writer Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880). When the novel was first serialized, public prosecutors attacked the novel for obscenity. The resulting trial in January 1857 made the story notorious. After Flaubert’s acquittal, Madame Bovary became a bestseller in April 1857 when it was published in two volumes. A seminal work of literary realism, the novel is now considered Flaubert’s masterpiece, and one of the most influential literary works in history.
Professor David Peimer
David Peimer is a professor of theatre and performance studies in the UK. He has taught at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and New York University (Global Division), and was a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University. Born in South Africa, David has won numerous awards for playwriting and directing. He has written eleven plays and directed forty in places like South Africa, New York, Brussels, London, Berlin, Zulu Kingdom, Athens, and more. His writing has been published widely and he is the editor of Armed Response: Plays from South Africa (2009) and the interactive digital book Theatre in the Camps (2012). He is on the board of the Pinter Centre in London.
I think so. I think we are fortunate that there are so many translators from French and German, Italian, et cetera, into English. And I think there’s some excellent translations in English.
The answer probably not. Probably not. Probably wouldn’t have been on trial and have tried to have the book banned. I doubt it. ‘Cause all before, women had the vote, women had rights way before.
Yes, absolutely. And similar, the triangle, et cetera, adultery, and so on. And similar thing of the psychologically driven, obsessive of desire in a way, definitely. I think, with Anna Karenina, that Tolstoy is even more obsessed with Russian history and with Russian history and the position of the aristocrats, the middle class, and the serfs. I think he’s even more, the excerpts, he’s even more obsessed with, he’s bringing history with the psychology to the novel.