Gustave Flaubert

About Gustave Flaubert

Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) stands as a monumental figure in the history of literature, primarily due to his relentless pursuit of literary realism and perfection. His masterpiece, Madame Bovary, is considered a landmark work that dramatically shifted the course of the novel, moving away from Romanticism toward a more objective, detailed, and psychologically acute examination of everyday life and provincial society. This dedication to stylistic rigor and verisimilitude is why MIT’s Pantheon project ranks him at #516 globally for historical influence.

Despite this high historical placement, Flaubert's contemporary digital footprint is modest. He garnered approximately 207K Wikipedia pageviews in 2025. To illustrate the attention disparity, this figure is significantly lower than that of his fellow writer, Pablo Neruda, who ranks lower in historical importance at #819 but commanded 507K views. Even Stefan Zweig, ranked slightly higher at #633, received 340K views, suggesting Flaubert occupies a relatively narrow slice of the modern internet's literary attention budget.

Further analysis of his online presence indicates a slight cooling of interest. His 2025 views showed a year-over-year decrease of -5.5%, and his momentum from Q1 to Q3 also trended down by -2%, suggesting that while his HPI ranking is high, his current online visibility is stable but gently declining.