Savage Reprisals: Bleak House, Madame Bovary, Buddenbrooks
by Peter Gay
75 Members (3.40)
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Description
Focusing on three literary masterpieces--Charles Dickens's Bleak House (1853), Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary (1857), and Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks (1901)--Peter Gay, a leading cultural historian, demonstrates that there is more than one way to read a novel. Typically, readers believe that fiction, especially the Realist novels that dominated Western culture for most of the nineteenth century and beyond, is based on historical truth and that great novels possess a documentary value. That show more trust, Gay brilliantly shows, is misplaced; novels take their own path to reality. Using Dickens, Flaubert, and Mann as his examples, Gay explores their world, their craftsmanship, and their minds. In the process, he discovers that all three share one overriding quality: a resentment and rage against the society that sustains the novel itself. Using their stylish writing as a form of revenge, they deal out savage reprisals, which have become part of our Western literary canon. A New York Times Notable Book and a Best Book of 2002. show lessTags
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Author Information
57+ Works 8,246 Members
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Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 2002
- People/Characters
- Charles Dickens; Gustave Flaubert; Thomas Mann
- Dedication
- To Dorothy and Lewis Cullman, who changed my life, and to Dorn and Jo Ben-Atar[,] Jerry and Bella Berson[,] Henry and Jane Turner, my New Haven Crew
- First words
- During the spectacular career of literary Realism in the nineteenth century, the style was covered with accolades, none more heartfelt than Walt Whitman's: "For facts properly told, how mean appear all romances."
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)In short: in the hands of a major novelist, a fiction can make history, in both meanings of that expression.
- Publisher's editor
- Weil, Bob; Adelman, Ann
Classifications
- Genres
- Literature Studies and Criticism, Nonfiction, Fiction and Literature
- DDC/MDS
- 809.3 — Literature & rhetoric Literature, rhetoric & criticism History, description, critical appraisal of more than two literatures Fiction
- LCC
- PN3499 .G39 — Language and Literature Literature (General) Literature (General) Prose. Prose fiction History
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 75
- Popularity
- 420,441
- Rating
- (3.40)
- Languages
- Chinese, English, Portuguese
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 5
