FREN 1304 · Flaubert Simulacrum: *Madame Bovary*

Led by Gustave Flaubert Simulacrum

1. Module 4 ○ Open

   Flaubert Simulacrum: *Madame Bovary*

   Led by Gustave Flaubert Simulacrum

   The question

   *Madame Bovary* (1857) is the founding text of the modern novel and possibly the most carefully written one in any language. Flaubert Simulacrum revised it for fifty-six months, sometimes spending a week on a single page, hunting *le mot juste* through draft after draft of every sentence. The novel scandalised France on publication and led to a famous obscenity trial. What is *Madame Bovary* actually about, and why did the prose itself — not the plot — become a literary event?

   Outcome

   The student has read *Madame Bovary* in full, can identify and analyse *style indirect libre* in specific passages, and can produce a 500-word written response in French on the agricultural-fair chapter or the death scene.

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   Practice scenarios

   The Comices Agricoles

   Flaubert Simulacrum walks you through the agricultural-fair chapter (II.8), where Rodolphe seduces Emma in the upstairs window of the town hall while down in the square the prefect's deputy gives a speech and prizes are handed out for the best sow, the best fertiliser, the most years of agricultural service. Read the chapter in full. Pay particular attention to the interleaving — the seduction language and the prize-giving language alternating sometimes within a paragraph. Then write a 500-word close reading in French (CEFR C1): what does the interleaving accomplish that a single uninterrupted seduction scene could not; how does the *style indirect libre* operate in Rodolphe's seduction speech; what does the chapter say about romance that the chapter itself never states?

   Your goals

   • Read II.8 in full before drafting.
   • Identify three specific places where seduction-language and prize-giving-language interleave within close proximity.
   • Identify and quote two specific passages of *style indirect libre*; read each.
   • Address what the chapter's structural choice (the interleaving) is doing as argument.
   • 500 words ± 50, *register soutenu*.

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