Bouvard and Pécuchet

Although unfinished during his lifetimee Bouvard and Pécuchet is now considered to be one of Flaubert's greatest masterpieces. In his own wordse the novel is "a kind of encyclopedia made into farce . . . A book in which I shall spit out my bile." At the center of this book are Bouvard and Pécuchete two retired clerks who set out in a search for truth and knowledge with persistent optimism in light of the fact that each new attempt at learning about the world ends in disaster. In the literar...