The aim of this study is to assess in what ways Madame Bovary constitutes a radically new departure in the history of the novel. After tracing the circuitous route by which Flaubert came to start work on Madame Bovary when he was almost thirty, the book analyses the innovatory features of the work, namely its subject-matter, its narrative techniques, its style and language, and its narratorial perspectives. The study then draws together what has been established and shows how everything in the novel is suffused with a very modern irony. Though it has long been recognised that Madame Bovary marks a turning point in the history of the novel, the time has come when it is opportune to define exactly in what ways this is so.