Résumé
Résumé de Trois hommes en Allemagne
À qui s’adresse-t-il ?
Readers who like gentle English humour, comic mishaps among old friends, and affectionate mockery of national habits. It suits anyone who enjoys a storyteller who wanders off the road and comes back with a better tale.
De quoi parle ce livre ?
Three Men on the Bummel is a comic travel book by Jerome K. Jerome, published in the 1900s as a follow up to Three Men in a Boat. The same three friends return: the narrator J., his old friend Harris, and the bachelor George. This time they leave their wives and children behind and set off by bicycle through Germany and the Black Forest. A bummel, as the narrator explains, is a journey with no fixed goal, limited only by the need to get home on time.
The book gives you the laughter of the friends' small disasters and the writer's sharp eye for how nations and families behave. Along the way you meet a ruined yacht trip, a tandem bicycle, a talking cab horse, a German passion for rules, and a string of stories told by a narrator who cannot stop digressing. It is a book of anecdotes strung on a route, and each one has its own comic engine.
We begin where the trip itself begins, in a smoking room, with three men who all agree that what they need is a change, and who must find a way to tell the wives.
Dans ce résumé
- 1Three men plot their escapeFree
- 2The wives have their own ideas
- 3Gadgets, overhauling and a foreign phrasebook
- 4Early rising and a bad morning in London
- 5A digression on information and scenery
- 6Germany seen as the tidy land
- 7Prague, a hair restorer and a plot against beer
- 8Trouble with the German law
- 9Cycling in practice, and the Black Forest
- 10Dogs, fruit and the manners of students
Point clé 1 sur 10
Three men plot their escape
The book opens with Harris declaring that what the three men need is a complete change. Mrs. Harris looks in to remind them about the children, and the friends turn to the real problem. How do two married men and one bachelor leave home without looking selfish?
George suggests business, and the narrator answers with the story of a young engineer who told his wife he was going to Vienna to inspect mines. She simply came along, and he spent ten summer days writing reports that nobody wanted. The friends decide that frankness is the better plan, but each tries to pin the idea on someone else.
Then comes the question of where to go. Harris likes the sea, and the narrator tells the tale of the yacht Rogue. He hired it for a holiday, trusted a skipper called Goyles, and found that the wind was always wrong. It blew off the land, then from the north, south and east, while the crew ate and drank at his expense. He at last escaped with two friends and sold the stores on Yarmouth sands.
The river is rejected as damp, Scotland as wet, and Switzerland as too easy. Harris proposes a bicycle tour, and George objects to the hills and the wind. Harris suggests the Black Forest, and talk of little cogwheel railways up the hills is cut off when Mrs. Harris reappears.
That’s 1 of 10 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Questions about Trois hommes en Allemagne
What is Three Men on the Bummel about?
It follows three friends, the narrator, Harris and George, on a bicycle tour from Hamburg through Germany and the Black Forest. The trip is a thin frame for comic anecdotes about family life, gadgets, language and German habits.
What does the word bummel mean in the title?
The narrator explains it near the end as a journey, long or short, with no particular destination. Its only limit is the need to be back at the starting point by a set time.
Is Three Men on the Bummel a sequel to Three Men in a Boat?
Yes, it brings back the same three friends, but it stands on its own. Here they swap the Thames for bicycles and a trip abroad. You do not need to know the first book to follow the jokes.
Is Three Men on the Bummel a true story?
It is a comic novel, though it draws on Jerome's own travels in Germany and uses real places. The incidents are exaggerated for humour, and the narrator himself jokes about his lack of accuracy.
Is Three Men on the Bummel easy to read?
It is written in a lively, chatty voice, with short anecdotes and plenty of dialogue. Each chapter can be enjoyed on its own, so you can pick it up and put it down easily.