Flaubert

American  

[floh-bair, floh-ber] / floʊˈbɛər, floʊˈbɛr /

noun

1. Gustave 1821–80, French novelist.

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Flaubert British  

/ ˈfləʊbɛə, flobɛr /

noun

1. Gustave (ɡystav). 1821–80, French novelist and short-story writer, regarded as a leader of the 19th-century naturalist school. His most famous novel, Madame Bovary (1857), for which he was prosecuted (and acquitted) on charges of immorality, and L'Éducation sentimentale (1869) deal with the conflict of romantic attitudes and bourgeois society. His other major works include Salammbô (1862), La Tentation de Saint Antoine (1874), and Trois contes (1877)

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Example Sentences

When Gustave Flaubert saw Antonio Canova’s sculpture “Eros and Psyche” in 1845, he surreptitiously kissed Psyche’s marble armpit.

From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 24, 2025

She was visited in her dressing room by Gustave Flaubert, while Mark Twain wrote: “There are five kinds of actresses: bad actresses, fair actresses, good actresses, great actresses, and Sarah Bernhardt.”

From Seattle Times • May 1, 2023

In Madame Bovary, another French novelist, Gustave Flaubert, wrote of a rural doctor’s young wife whose desire for consumer goods and urban pleasures leads to her ruin.

From Textbooks • Dec. 14, 2022

Flaubert would have recoiled at the business school jargon, but the work was deemed necessary as the institution navigates through some dangerous crosscurrents.

From Los Angeles Times • Jul. 14, 2022

My freshman literature teacher only smiled when I mentioned the grammar school incident concerning Flaubert.

From "Hunger of Memory" by Richard Rodriguez