Zusammenfassung
Zusammenfassung von Der Mann mit dem gebrochenen Ohr
Für wen es gedacht ist
For readers who love early science fiction, satire, and French history told with a light hand, and anyone who enjoys comedy about a person stranded in the wrong age.
Worum es in diesem Buch geht
The Man with the Broken Ear is a comic science fiction novel by the French writer Edmond About. It first appeared in 1862, in the years of Napoleon III's Second Empire, when France still argued about the memory of the first Napoleon. About took an odd scientific idea, a man dried out and preserved for decades, and used it to ask what a soldier of the old Empire would make of modern Paris.
The book gives you a fast, witty story with a sharp eye for national vanity. A young engineer, a stubborn old officer and a changed France make up its main strands. It is also one of the early French tales of suspended animation, and it treats the idea with a smile rather than with dread. Let us begin with the scientist whose experiment sets everything going.
In dieser Zusammenfassung
- 1A scientist's strange experiment begins everythingFree
- 2A young engineer takes home a living problem
- 3Colonel Fougas wakes and takes command
- 4A soldier out of time meets modern France
- 5Glory, memory and the satire beneath the comedy
- 6A light voice with a sharp point
Punkt 1 von 6
A scientist's strange experiment begins everything
The story starts from a scientific curiosity. A German scientist named Meiser has worked on a way to remove the water from a living body and then restore it, so that a person could be kept intact for many years. In the logic of the novel, a body that is dried carefully enough does not decay, and with the right treatment it can be brought back to life.
About does not weigh the reader down with laboratory detail. He gives just enough to make the idea feel like a real piece of nineteenth century chemistry, the kind of thing a newspaper reader of 1862 might half believe. That plain, confident tone is part of the comedy. The marvel is treated as an ordinary matter of method.
The experiment needs a subject, and the subject is a soldier of the Napoleonic army. He is a man of the earlier age, full of the energy and pride of the Empire, and he is preserved at the height of his belief in his emperor. That choice matters, because the later fun depends on how firmly he holds those beliefs.
So the opening sets two clocks side by side. One is the clock of science, which can stop a life. The other is the clock of history, which keeps running. The distance between them is the engine of the book.
That’s 1 of 6 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Questions about Der Mann mit dem gebrochenen Ohr
What is The Man with the Broken Ear about?
It is a comic novel about a young engineer who revives a preserved soldier of Napoleon's army. The soldier, Colonel Fougas, wakes in a changed France, and his old loyalties and pride cause trouble for those around him.
When was The Man with the Broken Ear written?
Edmond About published it in 1862, during the Second Empire under Napoleon III. It is a work of fiction, not a true story, though it draws on real nostalgia for the first Napoleon.
Is The Man with the Broken Ear science fiction?
Yes, it is counted among the early French science fiction tales. Its central idea is a method of drying and restoring a living body, but the book uses that idea mainly for comedy and satire.
Who is Fougas in The Man with the Broken Ear?
Fougas is the preserved officer of Napoleon's army whom the engineer Renault brings back to life. He is brave, vain and fiercely loyal to his emperor, and he is the book's main comic figure.
What does the broken ear mean in the title?
The broken ear is damage done to Fougas while he is a dried, preserved body. It gives the book its title and its odd first image.