Madame Bovary and Don Quixote
“Our ability to read and understand any particular novel is enhanced by our knowledge of other novels and by our awareness of the history and theory of novels”.
Our ability to read a novel is most certainly enhanced by our knowledge of other novels. To draw meaning, and feel emotion, from such novels we must understand their relationship with the world they are based in, the world we know, through lived experience. The mimetic content of a novel, or its themes and ideas, are thought about in terms of their relation to our understanding of the world around us, how well it imitates that world or conflicts with it.
Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary is a classic nineteenth century novel with a unique and memorable central character in Emma Bovary, who is shown in a realistic and convincing social setting. Emma Bovary’s “present day reality,”1 the setting of her life, her values and ideas, are described in rich and vivid detail. Although we use terms like ‘realism’ to describe this kind of novel because of its detailed depiction of daily life, what we are offered by these novels is not ‘life,’ but an image that is the creation of both the author’s raveling of life into fiction and the reader’s unraveling of fiction with life.2 There is the possibility for us to see novels as apart from real life because we consider them in regard to the real world. Fiction should not be seen as an exact reflection but as an imagined version, just as point of view is shaped by our endeavors to see the world in such a way as to make sense of it as we do when reading a novel. As readers we look for realistic characters and life-like stories to engage and thrill, something that is relatable. We want creators to bring forth characters who are three dimensional, complex and flawed so that they seem more real, more believable.
‘The novel is one bright book of life. Books are not life. They are only tremulations on the ether. But the novel as a tremulation can make the whole man alive
Our ability to read a novel is most certainly enhanced by our knowledge of other novels. To draw meaning, and feel emotion, from such novels we must understand their relationship with the world they are based in, the world we know, through lived experience. The mimetic content of a novel, or its themes and ideas, are thought about in terms of their relation to our understanding of the world around us, how well it imitates that world or conflicts with it.
Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary is a classic nineteenth century novel with a unique and memorable central character in Emma Bovary, who is shown in a realistic and convincing social setting. Emma Bovary’s “present day reality,”1 the setting of her life, her values and ideas, are described in rich and vivid detail. Although we use terms like ‘realism’ to describe this kind of novel because of its detailed depiction of daily life, what we are offered by these novels is not ‘life,’ but an image that is the creation of both the author’s raveling of life into fiction and the reader’s unraveling of fiction with life.2 There is the possibility for us to see novels as apart from real life because we consider them in regard to the real world. Fiction should not be seen as an exact reflection but as an imagined version, just as point of view is shaped by our endeavors to see the world in such a way as to make sense of it as we do when reading a novel. As readers we look for realistic characters and life-like stories to engage and thrill, something that is relatable. We want creators to bring forth characters who are three dimensional, complex and flawed so that they seem more real, more believable.
‘The novel is one bright book of life. Books are not life. They are only tremulations on the ether. But the novel as a tremulation can make the whole man alive