Résumé
Résumé de Nouvelles françaises
À qui s’adresse-t-il ?
For readers who love short fiction, Romantic adventure, strange fantasy and sharp irony, and anyone who enjoys a sampler of French literature or has a few minutes for a complete tale.
De quoi parle ce livre ?
This book gathers short stories by French writers of the nineteenth century. Among them are Prosper Mérimée, Guy de Maupassant, Alphonse Daudet, Honoré de Balzac, Théophile Gautier, Alfred de Musset, François Coppée, and the writing pair known as Erckmann-Chatrian. Together they show how the French short story grew from Romantic adventure and the fantastic tale into a sharp, modern form.
You get a quick tour of a century of French storytelling. There are tales of passion and danger, of war and invasion, of village life and Paris streets, and of small people caught by fate or by their own vanity. Each writer has a different voice, and hearing them side by side lets you compare them. Let us begin with the Romantic storytellers, who set the stage.
Dans ce résumé
- 1Romantic tales open the centuryFree
- 2Mérimée tells wild stories coolly
- 3Daudet and others look to home and war
- 4Maupassant sharpens the form
Point clé 1 sur 4
Romantic tales open the century
The older writers in the collection grew up in the age of French Romanticism. Balzac, born in 1799, is best known for the huge cycle of novels and tales called La Comédie humaine, which tried to portray the whole of French society. His shorter works often show a single obsession, such as money, love or ambition, pushed to its limit.
Alfred de Musset was first a poet and playwright. His prose is quick, witty and full of feeling, and it often treats love as a game that can wound the players. Théophile Gautier held that beauty mattered more than usefulness. His tales often turn toward the strange, where the past and the present, or the living and the dead, seem to touch.
These three writers share a taste for vivid settings and strong emotion. They were writing when the short story was still finding its shape in France. Their work shows the range the form could cover, from the realistic to the fantastic.
That’s 1 of 4 key points.
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Questions about Nouvelles françaises
What is French Short Stories about?
It is a collection of short tales by nineteenth-century French authors. The stories range from Romantic adventure and strange fantasy to scenes of war, village life and city life, with several different voices and moods.
Which authors are included in French Short Stories?
The authors named are Prosper Mérimée, Guy de Maupassant, Alphonse Daudet, Erckmann-Chatrian, François Coppée, Théophile Gautier, Honoré de Balzac and Alfred de Musset, with Douglas Labaree Buffum as the collector of the volume.
Is French Short Stories hard to read?
Not usually. Short stories give you a complete tale in a sitting.
Why is Maupassant so important to the short story?
Maupassant wrote about three hundred stories in about ten years. He used plain style, exact detail and ironic turns, and his work became a model for short fiction in many languages.
Is French Short Stories worth reading?
It is a good choice if you want a quick look at French literature. In one book you meet several writers and styles, so you can find which ones you want to read further.