The Family Idiot Gustave Flaubert, 1821–1857, An Abridged Edition

<b>An approachable abridgment of Sartre’s important analysis of Flaubert.</b><br> <br> From 1981 to 1994, the University of Chicago Press published a five-volume translation of Jean-Paul Sartre’s <i>The Family Idiot: Gustave Flaubert, 1821-1857</i>, a sprawling masterwork by one of the greatest intellects of the twentieth century. This new volume delivers a compact abridgment of the original by renowned Sartre scholar, Joseph Catalano.<br> <br> Sartre claimed that his existential approach to psychoanalysis required a new Freud, and in his study of Gustave Flaubert, Sartre becomes that Freud. The work summarizes Sartre’s overarching aim to reveal that human life is a meaningful adventure of freedom. In discussing Flaubert’s work, particularly his classic novel <i>Madame Bovary</i>, Sartre unleashes a fierce critique of modernity as nihilistic and demeaning of human dignity.