Madame Bovary and The Bad Girl: Two Novels Sharing Common Threads

LITCHFIELD, Conn. - June 18, 2017 - PRLog -- In this series, we will look at the ways in which Nobel-Prize winning Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa has revisited, revised, and updated for the 21st century Gustav Flaubert's 19th century masterpiece, Madame Bovary. By first reading Madame Bovary, followed by The Bad Girl, we will discuss how these novels consider such themes as revolution, the nature of realism, representations of women, illness, and narration as rendered in two different centuries from two different parts of the world while at the same time maintaining their focus on the unifying vision of a woman stifled by the social codes of her time.

July 16: Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert. The story focuses on a doctor's wife, Emma Bovary, who has adulterous affairs and lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life.

August 13: The Bad Girl by Mario Vargas Llosa. Ricardo Somocurcio is in love with a bad girl. However poorly she treats him, he is doomed to worship her.

Aimee Pozorski teaches contemporary American literature at Central Connecticut State University and holds a PhD in English with a certificate in psychoanalytic studies from Emory University. She served as President of the Philip Roth Society from 2009 to May 2015. Her books include Roth and Trauma: The Problem of History in the Later Works and Falling After 9/11: Crisis in American Art and Literature.

All Oliver Wolcott Library events are free and open to the public. Space is limited. Registration is required and can be done by calling 860-567-8030 or logging onto http://www.owlibrary.org and clicking on Programs/Adult Programs.