Zusammenfassung
Zusammenfassung von Die Chouanen
Für wen es gedacht ist
For readers who love historical fiction, spies and divided loyalties, and the early work of a great French novelist. War, forbidden love and rival loyalties meet in the countryside of Brittany.
Worum es in diesem Buch geht
The Chouans is a novel by Honoré de Balzac, set in Brittany in 1799. It was published in 1829 and was the first book Balzac signed with his own name. He wrote it when he was a young author hunting for a style, and the example of Walter Scott's historical novels stands behind it. Balzac later placed it among the Scenes of Military Life in his huge cycle of fiction called The Human Comedy.
The subject is a civil war inside France. The Republic, born of the Revolution, fights royalist rebels in the western countryside. These rebels are the Chouans, and the name is tied to the owl-like cries they used as signals. In this novel the war is a clash of loyalties and a story of love between enemies. You get soldiers, peasants, spies, a nobleman in hiding and a woman sent to ruin him. Let us begin with the landscape and the men who march through it.
In dieser Zusammenfassung
- 1Brittany in 1799 is a land at warFree
- 2A woman is sent to trap the rebel chief
- 3The marquis and the Chouans live by a code
- 4Love grows where it should not
- 5Loyalty, duty and class pull people apart
- 6Scott's adventure meets Balzac's sharp eye
Punkt 1 von 6
Brittany in 1799 is a land at war
The story opens in the autumn of 1799, in the west of France. The Revolution has overthrown the king, and the Republic is now ruled from Paris. But in Brittany many villagers, led by priests and local nobles, still hold to the old order. They fight from hedges, woods and narrow sunken lanes, and they know every path.
Balzac begins with a scene on the road, where a column of republican soldiers marches with a group of young recruits. The recruits are Breton peasants, forced into an army they do not want. Around them the countryside looks quiet, yet it is full of watching eyes. The reader feels from the first pages that the land itself is hostile to the troops.
At the head of the soldiers is Commandant Hulot. He is a veteran of the Republic's wars, gruff, loyal and plain in his speech. He has no illusions about the enemy, and he treats his own men with rough kindness. Balzac makes him one of the most solid and likeable figures in the book, even though he stands on the side of the Revolution.
The Chouans are shown with equal force. They come from farms and villages, and they fight with a mix of faith, loyalty to their lords and plain stubbornness. Among them is Marche-à-Terre, a hard and frightening leader. These opening scenes set up a war in which neither side is simple, and where an ambush can come from any hedge.
That’s 1 of 6 key points.
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