Explorations Read-Aloud: “Madame Bovary” by Gustave Flaubert

Every Friday, at 11:00 am, on the library’s YouTube Channel and Facebook Page, the library will stream a brand new recording of local thespian, Joseph Coté reading aloud selections from a wide variety of fascinating and entertaining books of fiction and non-fiction.

For December 19, Coté will read aloud from Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary.

Madame Bovary is a tragic novel about a young woman, Emma Bovary, who is married to a dull, but kindhearted doctor.

Dissatisfied with her life, she embarks on a series of extramarital affairs and indulges in a luxurious lifestyle in an attempt to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life. Her desire for passion and excitement leads her down a path of financial ruin and despair, ultimately resulting in a tragic end.

For daring to peer into the heart of an adulteress and enumerate its contents with profound dispassion, the author of Madame Bovary was tried for “offenses against morality and religion.”

What shocks us today about Flaubert’s devastatingly realized tale of a young woman destroyed by the reckless pursuit of her romantic dreams is its pure artistry: the poise of its narrative structure, the opulence of its prose and its creation of a world whose minor figures are as vital its doomed heroine.

Long established as one of the greatest novels, the book has been described as a “perfect” work of fiction.

In reading Madame Bovary, one experiences a work that remains genuinely revolutionary almost a century and a half after its creation.

Click the links to find the library’s YouTube Channel and Facebook Page.

Thoughts to share? Book ideas to suggest?
Contact Joseph at friday-explorations@usa.net