Three Tales

by Gustave Flaubert, A. J. Krailsheimer

Overview

This collection of three tales, "A Simple Heart," "Saint Julian," and "Herodias" offers an excellent introduction to the work of one of the world's greatest novelists. In settings as familiar to the author as Normandy or as distant as biblical Palestine, these three stories reveal a writer skilled in narrative concentration and intensity of focus.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199555864
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	11/02/2009
Series:	Oxford World's Classics Series
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	144
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Gustave Flaubert was born in Rouen in 1821, the son of a prominent physician. A solitary child, he was attracted to literature at an early age, and after his recovery from a nervous breakdown suffered while a law student, he turned his total energies to writing. Aside from journeys to the Near East, Greece, Italy, and North Africa, and a stormy liaison with the poetess Louise Colet, his life was dedicated to the practice of his art. The form of his work was marked by intense aesthetic scrupulousness and passionate pursuit of le mot juste; its content alternately reflected scorn for French bourgeois society and a romantic taste for exotic historical subject matter. The success of Madame Bovary (1857) was ensured by government prosecution for “immorality”; Salammbô (1862) and The Sentimental Education (1869) received a cool public reception; not until the publication of Three Tales (1877) was his genius popularly acknowledged. Among fellow writers, however, his reputation was supreme. His circle of friends included Turgenev and the Goncourt brothers, while the young Guy de Maupassant underwent an arduous literary apprenticeship under his direction. Increasing personal isolation and financial insecurity troubled his last years. His final bitterness and disillusion were vividly evidenced in the savagely satiric Bouvard and Pécuchet, left unfinished at his death in 1880.

Roger Whitehouse has taught at the Sorbonne and at Bolton Institute, where he is a research fellow.

Geoffrey Wall is author of the critically acclaimed Flaubert: A Life and translated Madame Bovary for Penguin Classics.

Table of Contents

	Chronology	vii
	Introduction	xi
	Further Reading	xxxi
	Translator's Note	xxxii
	A Simple Heart	3
	The Legend of Saint Julian Hospitator	41
	Herodias	71
	Notes	105

Editorial Reviews

"This collection . . . is a wonderful read and relevant in every way with today’s readers as it was to the nineteenth century readers of its day . . . Perfect." —Parent Talk

From the Publisher