Sentimental Education
Based on Flaubert's own youthful passion for an older woman, Sentimental Education was described by its author as "the moral history of the men of my generation." It follows the amorous adventures of Frederic Moreau, a law student who, returning home to Normandy from Paris, notices Mme Arnoux, a slender, dark woman several years older than himself. It is the beginning of an infatuation that will last a lifetime. He befriends her husband, an influential businessman, and as their paths cross and re-cross over the years, Mme Arnoux remains the constant, unattainable love of Moreau's life. Blending love story, historical authenticity, and satire, Sentimental Education is one of the great French novels of the nineteenth century.
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What Hacker News says
- I created an account just to refute this ridiculous comment. Flaubert genius was he was incredibly economical in his writing. Salambo, Temptation of St Anthony, Madame Bovary and Sentimental Education are all so wildly different. Event translated into English the fragrant, elegance comes through. Nabokov, James Joyce, William James and Cormac McCarthy all tooks lessons from him and recognized the power of his writing.
The papers of Cormac McCarthy have some self inspired French poetry inspired from 'The Temptation of St. Anthony'. Scenes from Blood Meridian are inspired by the violence of certain scenes in the Temptation.
He was a massively talented genius writer. I think you were forced to learn and appreciate literature and any work that is administered in an academic setting loses its charm.
Denigrating Greek literature is incredibly dismissive. Some of the passages of the Illiad (the description of the shield of Achilles or the scenes of Hectors fear of impending death). Or the Odyssey (the dog recognizing Odysseus) remain the some of the most evocative, tragic scenes of all liteature.
Literature reflects the age in which it is written. Simply declaring all social critique is useful between the 60s and 80s robs you of any undestanding of the past.
Madame Bovary is a savage social critique of insipid provincial life. You can feel the scorn and disdain dripping off the pages. Flaubert had opinions on his own characters and was without any empathy for them.
This entire comment is indicative of a tech bro who had a bad experience in public schooling.
Many of the classics are classics for a reason because time is the greatest sieve of quality or they are essential to understanding the Western cannon and by extension the entirety of Western thought.
- > From today's perspective, it's boring, it's not insightful and the style is excruciatingly dated
From your perspective. From my perspective, Madame Bovary and Sentimental Education are exceptional. Fresh, engaging and psychologically insightful. I would recommend anyone who enjoys reading to try Flaubert.
- Most definitely read Flaubert's "Sentimental Education." The ending still gets to me.
- Only fantasy novels? To take an example close to hand, Flaubert's Sentimental Education describes a fair number of elaborate meals.
- Er, the example from the article isn't that bad, if you're used to the jargon.
> The work of the text is to literalize the signifiers of the first encounter, dismantling the ideal as an idol. In this literalization, the idolatrous deception of the first moment becomes readable. The ideal will reveal itself to be an idol. Step by step, the ideal is pursued by a devouring doppelganger, tearing apart all transcendence. This de-idealization follows the path of reification, or, to invoke Augustine, the path of carnalization of the spiritual. Rhetorically, this is effected through literalization. A Sentimental Education does little more than elaborate the progressive literalization of the Annunciation.
The gist of it is that there's an opposition between "text" and "ideal"; from the author's POV, ideals are really false idols, and Flaubert's genius is to literalize stuff (hard to figure what's meant by "Annunciation" out of context), that is to create text and not ideal.
