The son of a doctor and an aristocrat, Gustave Flaubert grew up in Rouen, where he received a literature-rich private education. In 1840, he went to Paris to attend law school. There, he met Victor Hugo, decided to become a writer, abandoned law, and, in 1846, began an affair with poet and novelist L

High realism, Lush, Representational, Sardonic, Tragic

Eons before "Days of Our Lives" reared its ugly head on television, Tolstoy was a master of the soap opera. His serialized surveys of nineteenth-century Russian society are devoted to detailing in relentlessly romantic prose the epiphanies of love and war, the travails of the individual on the battle

Dramatic, Epic, High realism, Huge, Monumental

Anxiety, Catastrophe, Ecstatic, Epic, Existentialist literature, High realism, Joyful, Manic, Psychological