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Gustave Flaubert’s “Madame Bovary” the spiritual aspects of religion.

Emma rebels against the monotony of her existence by pursuing sensual fantasies of ecstasy and love. Unhappily, Emma is married to a devoted, clumsy rural doctor. However, her sensual and emotional impulses only result in her corruption and demise. Madame Bovary is a brilliant psychological portrait that graphically portrays the human mind's search for transcendence. Who is Madame Bovary in particular? This was an outstanding response by Flaubert: "Madame Bovary, c'est moi." The publication of this masterwork in 1857 propelled Flaubert into the pantheon of the world's greatest novelists.

A summary of the historical context is necessary. With the overthrow of the monarchy, aristocracy, nobility, and church by the French Revolution in 1789, the French severed their ties to the medieval political order. This was neither a controlled nor a civil revolt. The Revolutionaries looted and burned chateau, nobles were forced to relinquish their traditional privileges, religious orders were suppressed, church property was nationalized, and clergy were required to pledge allegiance to the new Constitution, severing their ties to the Pope. Ultimately, the monarchy itself was abolished, and a republican dictatorship seized control of the nation. Those who opposed these measures were executed in the most inhumane manners, particularly by guillotine. King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette were beheaded in 1793, along with scores of royal sympathizers and thousands of orthodox Catholic bishops, priests, monks, nuns, and laypeople, resulting in the first genocide of the modern era during the Vendée War. Napoleon Bonaparte overthrew the Directory in 1799 and proclaimed himself "Emperor of the French."


Under Napoleon I (as he would eventually be known), the Church began to regain some of its former prestige and influence. These concessions were not made immediately. The Papal States of Italy were abolished, and the popes were imprisoned for two consecutive pontificates. In the 1850s, following a series of brief administrations, Napoleon III, Bonaparte's nephew, consolidated the Church's traditional, albeit spiritualized, position. As emperor, he understood, as did his uncle as president of the Second French Republic, the importance of collaborating with the Church to establish a stable France. [b]Napoleon III was not religious, but his wife was, and the majority of the French people maintained a firm attachment to their traditional religion.[b] Accordingly, Napoleon III

Contrary to Ms. Lee's assertion, Catholics have never ascribed the charism of infallibility to ecclesiastical censorship, since Madame Bovary is arguably one of the greatest apologies for Christianity in contemporary French literature. This is reflected in Madame Bovary, the first novel published by Gustave Flaubert in 1857. Emma Bovary finds passion and fulfillment in material luxuries, a bourgeois social status, and eventual adulteries with two men in her surprisingly loveless marriage to Charles, which she willingly consents to. She consumes arsenic out of desperation, which ultimately leads to her mortality.

Madame Bovary's publication sparked substantial controversy, with the French government charging the author with having "offended public and religious morality and decency." Flaubert was acquitted after a one-day trial, with the court noting that even though "the work referred to court deserves a harsh rebuke, as the task of literature must be to embellish and amuse the mind, by elevating understanding and refining morals," Flaubert "declared his respect for the accepted standards of good behaviour and all that pertains to religious morality" and had "only occasionally lost sight of the rules that every writer who respects himself must never violate The Roman Catholic Church was less forgiving. In 1864, Madame Bovary was added to the Index of Prohibited Books, where it remained until 1966. The Vatican appears to concur with literary critic Susanna Lee that "for Flaubert, the absence of God and the rise of science signify the denial of a last word, a negation of transcendence and determination." God's absence or indifference... is a defining characteristic of Madame Bovary."

Emma Bovary struggles to find her place in the world, divided between the mysteries of faith and the certainty of reason.
Which of these two worldviews does the novel, if either, support? The answer appears obvious. The world of Gustave Flaubert is not one of miracles and mysteries, but of lovable naturalism that is intellectually accessible to the average reader. The novel contains dozens of literary references, with the vast majority referring to secular works. In addition to other non-Christian works of literature and art, the reference to Victor Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris appears in each of the book's three sections. Homais, a physician, is the novel's spokesman for rationalism and its surety to replace the functions previously served by traditional religion.

Flaubert has already established that Monsieur Bournisien is actively concerned for the spiritual and material welfare of his parishioners: "Last year, he helped our people bring in the straw; he could carry six bales at once; he was so strong!" Despite the fact that Homais later declines this compliment in his defense with cynicism, the physician's words are soon disregarded, as if they were nothing more than straw in the wind. Monsieur Bournisien, a "well-endowed youth," is not the delicate, effeminate eunuch of the anticlerics; rather, he is an authentic example of masculine pastoral leadership.
The clerics in Madame Bovary are not idealized, but they are decent, and their influence and input is advantageous. Certainly, Flaubert's novel is realistic: both the protagonist and her clerical saviors are defective. Similarly, Flaubert's God is neither deceased nor apathetic; rather, His grace operates in the real, everyday world of men, where the dead typically do not rise and the blind typically do not see. Flaubert does for God and religion what he does for all of his other characters: He places them in ordinary settings and allows them to speak for themselves, devoid of miracles and traditional hagiography.


1857 Madame Bovary..Gustave Flaubert
Translated by...Lowell Bair

Halliwell

See if one reads and can precis what they read one gets the above ..not scriptures to save us..

Utilization of Google is not necessary in order to propagate the opinions of others.

ps ..some of these threads were written when I attended University, I found a collection of them recently.
Ai was not thought of then..

In reply to sgtdjones

That is a good book the first book i read in both french and english at mcgill

In reply to velo

I didn't have the opportunity to attend McGill University but I love Moreal...

So many great books the professors made us read and precis ( 30 t0 50 pages)in Philosophy ("love of wisdom.")

epistemology (knowledge & truth),
metaphysics (reality & being),
logic (argumentation & reason),
axiology (aesthetics & ethics),
political philosophy (the state & government)

The alchemist is great too

In reply to velo

The Alchemist

Paulo Coelho's magnum opus centers on Santiago, a young Andalusian shepherd who longs to find a legendary treasure.
His journey will take him to riches that are both distinctive and satisfying.
Following one's dreams, listening to one's heart, learning to identify opportunity, and reading the omens sprinkled along
the path of life are all lessons that can be gleaned from Santiago's journey.

In reply to sgtdjones

Barry!

In reply to velo

A few more That I read...

The Malady of Death

France and Women, 1789-1914: Gender, Society and Politics

Les Parisiennes: Resistance, Collaboration, and the Women of Paris Under Nazi Occupation

My Blue Notebooks: The Intimate Journal of Paris's Most Beautiful and Notorious Courtesan

In reply to googley

Madame Bovary exhibits a higher level of intellect and does not rely on the usage of search engines such as Google to demonstrate her brilliance.

Ohhhhh geeeeezeee now another thread about Canada , or another verse on scriptures...

see what you caused Googs...

In reply to sgtdjones

In reply to googley

Right on queue...
My stalker knows what schools I attended in T&T...

The illiterate is clueless about Aristotle or Plato's writings and what they mean

to be so daff must be painful when one relies on google.

Any fool can criticize, complain and condemn and most fools do...

....Carnegie

In reply to sgtdjones

I like your style

Major in engineering
Minor in philosophy

How yuh still chupid so is proof of that age old adage that you can lead a horse to water…

In reply to Halliwell

why yuh calling stupidjones names??

Which of those degrees in your opinion allows for

or

Were those degrees gotten here? -

or here?: - A free govt school.

or here?: Me personally? I believe it was John D tech institute, since it was repurposed and renamed 30 yrs ago. That would make 38 yr old stupidjones a student there at 7-10 yrs old. A child prodigy!

Also please stop accusing our resident imbecile of posting copy-pasted AI output! Is jealous you jealous you don't have all dem educational achievements!

In reply to VIX

And in between all that, and that is not all either, he managed to get a jet and a mansion albeit with a dump for a basement on the Niagara escarpment.

Did he possess a timeturner (Harry Potter), did he live 10 lifetimes, is he a magician or simply a Fraud?

Occam’s razor should be applied to solve the above

It's amazing how I am so followed by a few posters on this Board .
I doubt anyone else is scrutinize as much as I am...
Plagiarism software , now Ai Software.
Are my posting plagiarized...I dont know I dont have such programs.
They are more interested in my life than I am
Their lives must be boring and really suck..
Its why I let them be concerned about me .

See how they come out from behind the rocks to attack
I have been attacked since the second week after I joined this site ..as someone who have so many handles ..
Yet I have one.
Amusing.

In reply to Halliwell

You know nothing about my Education , I never noted what I majored or minored in..you are grasping at straws.
I am posting a few papers that I did at University...requested during classes...if such bothers you...ignore it.
Could it be its beyond posters comprehension.

Notice how I tend to ignore you fcking idiots. As noted do whatever it takes to row your boat, it bothers me not.

In reply to sudden