How Madame Bovary drew on Don Quixote
A documented line of influence: Gustave Flaubert demonstrably engaged Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
Don Quixote
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra · 1605
RenaissanceThe influenced
Madame Bovary
Gustave Flaubert · 1856
The Age of the NovelRelevance
8/10
On Madame Bovary’s page
- Madame Bovary descends straight from Don Quixote — Flaubert knew it by heart before he could read, and called it the book he found his origins in
- Cervantes' great subject — a mind ruined by the wrong books — is Emma's whole tragedy, the romances of chivalry swapped for the romances of love
- A full study (Soledad Fox Maura's Flaubert and Don Quijote) traces the direct shaping; reading the Don first reveals the bloodline behind Emma's delusion
On Don Quixote’s page
- Don Quixote is the seed of Madame Bovary — and Flaubert said so himself
- "I can find my origins in the book I knew by heart before I knew how to read, Don Quixote," he wrote to Louise Colet in 1852
- The Don is undone by chivalric romances; Emma Bovary is undone by sentimental ones — Cervantes invented the disease, Flaubert gave it a new patient