Ideas), it could be argued that Flaubert allows for the possibility of relative enlightenment. In Bouvard et Pécuchet, Gustave Flaubert made fun of 18th and 19th century attempts to catalogue, classify, list, and record all of scientific and historical knowledge. In October 1872, he wrote, the novel is "a kind of encyclopedia made into a farce... I am planning a thing in which I give vent to my anger... I shall vomit over my contemporaries the disgust they inspire in me... It will be big and violent." It is possible that the stress contributed to his death as he was drawing near to the close of the novel. Indeed, in 1874, he confessed to George Sand "[it] is leading me very quietly, or rather relentlessly, to the abode of the shades. It will be the death of me!" Literary significance and criticism Ezra Pound wrote "Flaubert having recorded provincial customs in Madame Bovary and city habits in the Sentimental Education, set out to complete his record of nineteenth century life by presenting all sorts of things that the average man of the period would have had in his head." Pound compared Bouvard et Pécuchet to Joyce's Ulysses. Julian Barnes said that it "requires a stubborn reader, one willing to suspend normal expectations and able to confront both repetitious effects and a vomitorium of pre-digested book learning." In his essay "A Defense on Bouvard et Pécuchet" Jorge Luis Borges writes that "Flaubert was the author who forged the realist novel was also the first to shatter it." He compares the novel with the satirical parables of Jonathan Swift and Voltaire and thinks that it anticipates Franz Kafka's absurdism. English translations Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. T. W. Earp and G. W. Stonier (Jonathan Cape, 1936) Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Alban J. Krailsheimer (Penguin, 1976) Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Mark Polizzotti (Dalkey Archive, 2005) Screen adaptations Bouvard et Pécuchet (1971), directed by Robert Valey. Byli jednou dva písaři (1972), Czechoslovak TV series directed by Ján Roháč with Jiří Sovák and Miroslav Horníček as Bouvard and Pécuchet respectively Bouvard et Pécuchet (1990), directed by Jean-Daniel Verhaeghe. References Further reading Manuscripts on line: Source of many quotations in this article: etext (in French) Mark Polizzotti, trans. (2005), Bouvard and Pecuchet, – the most recent English translation. 1881 French novels Novels by Gustave Flaubert Unfinished novels Novels published posthumously Novels set in Normandy French satirical novels