The Family Idiot

An approachable abridgment of Sartres important analysis of Flaubert. From 1981 to 1994, the University of Chicago Press published a five-volume translation of Jean-Paul Sartres 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 Sartres overarching aim to reveal that human life is a meaningful adventure of freedom. In discussing Flauberts work, particularly his classic novel Madame Bovary, Sartre unleashes a fierce critique of modernity as nihilistic and demeaning of human dignity.