In 1857, following the publication of Madame Bovary, Flaubert was charged with having committed an "outrage to public morality and religion." Dominick LaCapra, an intellectual historian with wide-ranging literary interests, here examines this remarkable trial. LaCapra draws on material from Flaubert’s correspondence, the work of literary critics, and Jean-Paul Sartre’s analysis of Flaubert. LaCapra maintains that Madame Bovary is at the intersection of the traditional and the modern novel, simultaneously invoking conventional expectations and subverting them.

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It is frivolously tempting (especially so in the light of Dominick LaCapra’s absorbing and provocative book) to read the trial of Madame Bovary as an ironic Flaubertian text. But of course the trial was real enough, for in 1857 Flaubert was charged with outrage to public morality. In his elucidation of how the novel confronted its own trial, LaCapra addresses issues which are of central concern to modern literary theory.