The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller

Gustave Flaubert was born on 12th December 1821 in Rouen, in Normandy, France. A gifted child he began writing as early as eight. He was educated at the Lycée Pierre-Corneille in Rouen until 1840 and thence to Paris to study law, a city he disliked. He studied little, made few friends and preferred to spend his time writing. His first finished work was ‘November’, a novella, completed in 1842. By 1846 after an attack of epilepsy, he left Paris and abandoned his law studies. That same year he began a relationship with the poet Louise Colet, which lasted eight years. His politics developed in these years of revolutions throughout Europe as stridently against despotism, and as one who celebrated protest against the elite and the establishment. In September 1849, Flaubert completed ‘The Temptation of Saint Anthony’. After 4 days reading it aloud to two friends, they advised him to destroy it and to focus his writing on day-to-day life rather than the fantastic. A long journey to the Middle