Summary
Gustave Flaubert: The Temptation of Saint Anthony
The god of French and world literature, creator of Madame Bovary and Sentimental Education, got the idea for the book The Temptation of Saint Anthony when he was eighteen years old. He wrote the first version, inspired by the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza, in 1847-1848, for which he traveled to Egypt, but did not finish it because he started writing the novel Madame Bovary. He returns to St. Anthony in 1856, but he interrupted that work again to write the novel Salambo (Flaubert had always been fascinated by the ancient world), and then Sentimental education. He published the last version of The Tasting of St. Anthony only in 1874, as a novel with a dramatic structure that takes place in one night. The main actors of these visions of St. Anthony are Amonaria, his love from his youth, King Nebuchadnezzar, the Queen of Sheba, Hilarion (Antony's disciple) as the embodiment of Satan, along with lust and death, in the form of a young man and an old woman. This book is, among other things, an unsurpassed study of religion, philosophy and paganism.
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