European Literature Society

The English Department’s European Literature Society met again on Tuesday after school to discuss their second work of literature of the year: “A Simple Heart”, a story by Gustave Flaubert that appeared in his book Three Tales in 1877. The story follows the kind and loving maidservant Félicité from her youth to her death and details the many loves that she loses along the way. Our students from Years 11, 12 & 13 discussed what Flaubert was trying to do with Félicité in this story, after he had written the most acclaimed novels ever written in French – especially ‘Madame Bovary’, published twenty years before. For what is such a simple story, with very little happening, the group found hidden depths and profound meaning. The next book to be read and discussed is a work by one of the most infamous thinkers of the eighteenth-century: Voltaire’s ‘Candide’. 

Mr Ahern