Gustave Flaubert is a 19th-century French writer and novelist who is seen by critics as one of the pioneers of the realist school of literature in France and Europe. He was born in 1821 and died in 1880. He left university without studying law and devoted himself to writing and literature.

Birth and upbringing

Gustave Flaubert was born in 1821 in Rouen, a commune in the Seine department in the Normandy region in northwestern France.

He comes from a bourgeois family, where his father, Achille Cleopas, the chief surgeon, worked at the city hospital "Hotel Dieu", and his mother, the daughter of a doctor, belonged to a family of distinguished judges.

His hometown seems to have been the starting point in shaping his personality and style from the day he was born, mentioning in a number of his writings the hospital where he was born, which was near his home, where he spent his youth until he was 25 years old.

In his writings, he described the place: "I grew up in the midst of all the human tragedies from which I am separated by a wall. I don't like life and I'm not afraid of death."

In a letter to his famous sweetheart, Louise Collet, on July 1853, <>, he wrote: "The hospital runway overlooks our garden, how many times have my sister and I climbed the trellis and hung between the vineyards, staring curiously at the scattered corpses! The sun was shining on them, the same flies that flew over us and above the flowers would go down there, and come back buzzing."

Madame Bovary's most famous work by French novelist Gustave Flaubert (Al Jazeera)

Study and training

The child Volbert was close to his sister Caroline, who was 3 years younger than him, and his correspondence with her testifies to the level of closeness between them, as she was his colleague in playing, practicing arts, drawing and playing the piano, while he was not close to his older brother Achilles, who followed in the footsteps of his father and succeeded him in the position of chief surgeon.

Flaubert studied primary and second in Rouen, and was raised by his young teacher Adolphe Cherwell, who passed on his passion for history. In 1840 he left for Paris to study law.

The stories of Volbert written as a student revealed his love for historical themes related to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Due to frequent epileptic seizures, Flaubert willingly abandoned his studies to devote himself physically and spiritually to his hobby of writing.

Maestro Realism

Known for his writings, Flaubert was known for his human reflections, and he let his emotions control his pen while writing in a way that combined vitriol criticism and disappointment and described social reality in all its manifestations.

From his intellectual experiments and his constant search to choose the right word, novels were born that were so popular and controversial that researchers continue to decipher them today.

Madame Bovary's novel is considered one of his most prominent nonfiction novels, with its unadorned scenes far from the romantic imagination of everyday life, which made it a realistic literature par excellence, so that Flaubert himself visited the places he mentioned in the novel to ensure the accuracy of his descriptions.

The novel "Salambo" by the French novelist Gustave Flaubert (Al Jazeera)

For many, Madame Bovary's novel is a realist par excellence because it presents social and political issues that were rarely talked about in France during this period.

This may be the main reason the author has been subjected to accusations of debauchery and prosecution for portraying religion in a controversial way and shedding light on illicit relationships between men and women.

The novel was also exposed to the influence of the French Revolution on the psyche of the middle class, and reflects this in the character of "Emma", who immersed herself in the world of romantic literature during her stay in the monastery and was influenced by love stories that she could not achieve on the ground, only to find herself sad and end her life with a deadly poison, leaving her husband with heavy debts.

Orientalism.. From Egypt to Palestine

In parallel with Europe's geopolitical interest in the Middle East during the days of the Crusades in the 11th century, European writers produced a large body of literature describing the geography of the region, people, languages, and cultures that facilitated the emergence of modern Orientalism as an academic system and discourse of power.

In this context, Flaubert has been interested in Orientalism from the beginning of his writing career, and this is evident in the extent to which he was influenced by literary figures such as Victor Hugo.

In his book Anger and Helplessness, published in 1836, Flaubert describes "the Orient with its scorching sun, blue sky, gilded minarets, stone temples, all its poems and the love of incense."

From Paris to Marseille to Alexandria, at the age of 27, Flaubert embarked on the adventure of a lifetime with his friend Maxime de Camp.

In an excerpt from his autobiographical book by French novelist Jeffrey Wall, he says that this journey changed Flaubert's life forever and provided inspiration for his most famous work.

Flaubert's novel "Emotional Education" began in 1864 and completed in 1869 (Al Jazeera)

The young Frenchman discovered the Mediterranean city of Alexandria and compared it to Marseille or Naples, got to know its streets, opera house and historic palaces, and met the expatriate French elite, soldiers, doctors and many of his compatriots who were about to leave the country.

From Alexandria, Flaubert and de Camp traveled south on a ship upward the Delta to Cairo. Upon arrival, they made their way to Azbakeya, the European quarter on the outskirts of the Old City.

In his many letters, Flaubert explained his constant search for the traces of antiquity in the daily customs of indigenous people and visiting Coptic mosques and monasteries to satisfy his curiosity.

"If possible, Flaubert would have traveled on a sofa lying motionless, watching landscapes, monuments and cities pass before his eyes like a canvas, like a panorama," de Camp wrote in his memoirs.

Flaubert has published a classic book of travel literature called "Flaubert in Egypt", in which he recounts his impressions during his travels using diaries, letters and travel diary, and has many photographs of his visits to the pyramids on the island, temples in Luxor, and giant pharaonic statues at Abu Simbel in the far south.

The two comrades arrived in the Sudanese city of Wadi Halfa on March 22, 1850 after leaving Egypt, then visited Palestine, Syria and Lebanon, before returning home on June 16, 1851, passing through Greece and Italy.

Upon his arrival in France, he published his book "Journey to the East" and "A Travel to Palestine", in which he provided a critical look and a special description of his visit to the city of Jerusalem and its religious monuments.

But some critics have observed Flaubert's insistence on embodying the role of a "culturally and economically superior white colonizer." Although he tried to remain objective in his writings on the East, his choice of scenes and details proved his resort to the common negative stereotypes of Arab "violence" and the association of Eastern women only with pleasure and sexual desire.

The Candidate was written by Flaubert in 1874 (Al Jazeera)

While academic interest tended to favor Flaubert's modernity and marginalize his historically more inspiring Orientalist works, this French novelist is considered one of the prominent European orientalists of the 19th century.

His writings on his travels to Egypt, which until recently remained unpublished, also became an important source in evaluating his work, prompting literary scholars to reassess the role that antiquity played in the man's career.

From Flaubert's books

  • Madame Bovary's novel", published in 1857.
  • Salambo, 1862.
  • The novel "Emotional Education", began in 1864 and completed its composition in 1869.
  • The Candidate, written in 1874.
  • Bøvar and Picochet, published in 1872.
  • The novel "Memoirs of a Madman", written in 1838.

Death

Flaubert died in Kraussier of a brain hemorrhage on May 1880, <>, leaving behind an unparalleled cultural treasure and some of the greatest masterpieces of French literature.