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

An approachable abridgment of Sartre’s important analysis of Flaubert. From 1981 to 1994, the University of Chicago Press published a five-volume translation of Jean-Paul Sartre’s The Family Idiot: Gustave Flaubert, 1821-1857, 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. 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 Madame Bovary, Sartre unleashes a fierce critique of modernity as nihilistic and demeaning of human dignity.

• | Author: Jean-Paul Sartre
• | Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
• | Publication Date: Jan 19, 2023
• | Number of Pages: 304 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Hardcover
• | ISBN-10: 0226822311
• | ISBN-13: 9780226822310