On Flaubert's "Madame Bovary": Leon's Allusions
First a good quote (what Leon saw in Emma):
Following the above quote, Leon goes on to compare Emma to two paintings (at least seemingly from my Kindle version): "Odalisque Bathing" and "Pale Woman of Barcelona."
However, a quick Google suggests that Flaubert intentionally made Leon's allusions incorrect or vague. The first may be an allusion to Ingres' La Grande Odalisque:
She was the mistress of all the novels, the heroine of all the dramas, the vague "she" of all the volumes of verse.*
Following the above quote, Leon goes on to compare Emma to two paintings (at least seemingly from my Kindle version): "Odalisque Bathing" and "Pale Woman of Barcelona."
However, a quick Google suggests that Flaubert intentionally made Leon's allusions incorrect or vague. The first may be an allusion to Ingres' La Grande Odalisque:
The second allusion is apparently to a poem not a painting: Alfred de Musset's L'Andalouse (The Andalusian), which begins thus:
Have you seen in Barcelona
An Andalusian in brown?
Pale as a beautiful autumn evening!It is my mistress, my lion!
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