Motionless we traverse countries we fancy we see, and your thought, blending with the fiction, playing with the details, follows the outline of the adventures. It mingles with the characters, and it seems as if it were yourself palpitating beneath their costumes.

Under this aspect Flaubert exercised an extraordinary influence over Guy de Maupassant Edmond de Goncourt Alphonse Daudet and Zola. His Œuvres Complètes (8 vols. Flaubert's lean and precise[citation needed] writing style has had a large influence on 20th century writers such as Franz Kafka and J.

Gustave Flaubert (French: [ɡystav flobɛʁ]; December 12 1821 – May 8 1880) was a French writer who is counted among the greatest novelists in Western literature. He is known especially for his first publiGustave Flaubertd novel Madame Bovary (1857) for his Correspondence and for his scrupulous devotion to his art and style.