Bovarysme is a term derived from

Gustave Flaubert Gustave Flaubert ( , , ; 12 December 1821 – 8 May 1880) was a French novelist. Highly influential, he has been considered the leading exponent of literary realism in his country. According to the literary theorist Kornelije Kvas, "in Flauber ...

's ''

Madame Bovary ''Madame Bovary'' (; ), originally published as ''Madame Bovary: Provincial Manners'' ( ), is a novel by France, French writer Gustave Flaubert, published in 1856. The eponymous character lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities ...

'' (1857), coined by Jules de Gaultier in his 1892 essay on Flaubert's novel, "Le Bovarysme, la psychologie dans l’œuvre de Flaubert". It denotes a tendency towards escapist

daydream Daydreaming is the stream of consciousness that detaches from current, external tasks when attention drifts to a more personal and internal direction. This phenomenon is common in people's daily life shown by a large-scale study in which partici ...

ing in which the dreamer imagines themself to be a hero or heroine in a romance, whilst ignoring the everyday realities of the situation. The eponymous Madame Bovary is an example of this. In his essay "Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca" (1927), T. S. Eliot suggested

Othello ''Othello'' (full title: ''The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice'') is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare, probably in 1603, set in the contemporary Ottoman–Venetian War (1570–1573) fought for the control of the Island of Cypru ...

's last great speech as an example: "I do not believe that any writer has ever exposed this ''bovarysme'', the human will to see things as they are not, more clearly than Shakespeare." The term bovarysme collectif was used by

Arnold van Gennep Arnold van Gennep, in full Charles-Arnold Kurr van Gennep (23 April 1873 – 7 May 1957) was a Dutch–German-French ethnographer and folklorist. Biography He was born in Ludwigsburg, in the Kingdom of Württemberg (since 1871, part of the G ...

(1908) and

Jean Price-Mars Jean Price-Mars (15 October 1876 – 1 March 1969) was a Haitian doctor, teacher, politician, diplomat, writer, and ethnographer.Walter Mitty Walter Jackson Mitty is a fictional character in James Thurber's first short story "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty", first published in ''The New Yorker'' on March 18, 1939, and in book form in '' My World—and Welcome to It'' in 1942. Thurber ...

References

{{Madame Bovary Imagination