BOUVARD & PÉCUCHET (Annotated)

Flaubert's unfinished final novel, Bouvard & Pécuchet, is a vast comic anatomy of nineteenth-century knowledge. Two Parisian copy-clerks inherit money, retire to Normandy, and attempt to master agriculture, chemistry, medicine, archaeology, education, politics, religion, and literature—only to expose the absurdities, contradictions, and fashionable certainties of each discipline. Written in Flaube...