It is these aspects of his work that situate him on the dividing line between realism and the experimental writing of modernism, and account for his reputation as the creator of the ‘modern’ self-reflexive novel. What distinguishes Flaubert from Balzac and the ‘realist’ novelists of his own generation are his stylistic innovations and his self-consciousness as a writer.
They focus on mundane, antiheroic characters and contain an abundance of seemingly objective descriptions of settings and social milieus. His two great novels of contemporary life, Madame Bovary (1857) and Sentimental Education ( L'Éducation sentimentale, 1869) adhere to a realist framework. By shifting the novelist's emphasis from representation to composition, he began to undo the realist novel from within. His role in the evolution of the French novel is a subversive one. Gustave Flaubert (1821–80) was as influential in the field of fiction as Baudelaire was in poetry.
– Flaubert, Letter to Louise Colet, 16 Jan. From the point of view of pure Art, you could almost establish it as an axiom that the subject is irrelevant, style itself being an absolute way of seeing things.
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