Maupassant's Fiction and the Darwinian View of Life

Maupassant's Fiction and the Darwinian View of Life PDF Author: Laurence A. Gregorio
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9780820476377
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
The Naturalists wrote from a «scientific» point of view, and no science had more currency in society in the late nineteenth century than Darwin's theory of evolution. Until now, this motif in Guy de Maupassant has escaped critical attention. Maupassant's Fiction and the Darwinian View of Life examines evolutionary theory in the literature in a way accessible to students of literature and science alike. It first explains the theoretical basis and Maupassant's affinity for it, then studies one short story, «La Ficelle», in its entirety, proposing a new and interesting interpretation based on evidence read through a Darwinian lens.The remaining chapters organize a lively Darwinian reading of Maupassant according to topics such as natural selection, heredity, and materialism. The book shows that Darwinism and the economic variety of Social Darwinism figure significantly in Maupassant's fiction. It is a must for students and teachers of Naturalism and Darwinism across the liberal arts.

Maupassant's Fiction and the Darwinian View of Life

Maupassant's Fiction and the Darwinian View of Life PDF Author: Laurence A. Gregorio
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9780820476377
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 220

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Naturalists wrote from a «scientific» point of view, and no science had more currency in society in the late nineteenth century than Darwin's theory of evolution. Until now, this motif in Guy de Maupassant has escaped critical attention. Maupassant's Fiction and the Darwinian View of Life examines evolutionary theory in the literature in a way accessible to students of literature and science alike. It first explains the theoretical basis and Maupassant's affinity for it, then studies one short story, «La Ficelle», in its entirety, proposing a new and interesting interpretation based on evidence read through a Darwinian lens.The remaining chapters organize a lively Darwinian reading of Maupassant according to topics such as natural selection, heredity, and materialism. The book shows that Darwinism and the economic variety of Social Darwinism figure significantly in Maupassant's fiction. It is a must for students and teachers of Naturalism and Darwinism across the liberal arts.

Women Genre and Circumstance

Women Genre and Circumstance PDF Author: Diana Holmes
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351192574
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
"Women, Genre and Circumstance brings together a series of challenging essays which explore the complex intersections of feminism, narrative and genre. Drawing on a wide range of 19th and 20th century texts novels, short stories and films they interrogate the relationship between womens situation and writing practice, and representations of history, memory, love, old age; they pursue questions of narrative form and its meanings, particularly the distinctive features of the short story. The politics of feminist criticism and careful attention to the operations of narrative combine in a sustained exploration of the aesthetics and ethics of fictional practices, and their role in the negotiation of gender and circumstance. The essays were written as tributes to the leading feminist scholar Elizabeth Fallaize. The contributors are Margaret Atack, Colin Davis, Suzanne Dow, Alison Finch, Diana Holmes, Diana Knight, Michele Le Doeuff, Toril Moi, Gill Rye, Judith Still, and Ursula Tidd."

Guy de Maupassant's Selected Works (Norton Critical Editions)

Guy de Maupassant's Selected Works (Norton Critical Editions) PDF Author: Guy de Maupassant
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393523101
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
“Smith successfully captures Maupassant’s depiction of nineteenth-century French culture using terminology that allows these wonderful texts to reach a fresh generation of readers. A solid translation of some wonderful short stories.” —Library Journal The Norton Critical Edition includes: - Thirty of Maupassant’s best short stories centering on war, the supernatural, and French life, translated by Sandra Smith. - An introduction and explanatory footnotes by Robert Lethbridge. - Essays, letters, and newspaper articles on the subjects that influenced Maupassant’s writing, including politics, war, love, despair, and the supernatural. - Sixteen critical assessments from Maupassant’s time to our own, including those by Joseph Conrad, David Coward, Mary Donaldson-Evans, Rachel Killick, Roger L. Williams, Ruth A. Hottell, and Katherine C. Kurk. - A Chronology and a Selected Bibliography.

Guy de Maupassant's Selected Works (First International Student Edition) (Norton Critical Editions)

Guy de Maupassant's Selected Works (First International Student Edition) (Norton Critical Editions) PDF Author: Guy de Maupassant
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393623505
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
“Smith successfully captures Maupassant’s depiction of nineteenth-century French culture using terminology that allows these wonderful texts to reach a fresh generation of readers. A solid translation of some wonderful short stories.” —Library Journal The Norton Critical Edition includes: - Thirty of Maupassant’s best short stories centering on war, the supernatural, and French life, translated by Sandra Smith. - An introduction and explanatory footnotes by Robert Lethbridge. - Essays, letters, and newspaper articles on the subjects that influenced Maupassant’s writing, including politics, war, love, despair, and the supernatural. - Sixteen critical assessments from Maupassant’s time to our own, including those by Joseph Conrad, David Coward, Mary Donaldson-Evans, Rachel Killick, Roger L. Williams, Ruth A. Hottell, and Katherine C. Kurk. - A Chronology and a Selected Bibliography.

The Foreign Soul & the Angelus

The Foreign Soul & the Angelus PDF Author: Guy de Maupassant
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 095585251X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 170

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Book Description
In The Foreign Soul we are in classic Maupassant territory. Robert Mariolle, a wealthy Parisian bachelor, has just arrived in the fashionable spa town of Aix-les-Bains determined to enjoy himself at the casino in the company of high society, attempting to get over his break up with mistress, Henriette Lambel. The Angelus was intended to be Maupassant's great masterpiece, an ambitious inverted allegory of Christianity into which the author would pour his growing pessimism and despair. Set during the Franco-Prussian War, as were some of Maupassant's finest short stories, The Angelus finds the pregnant Countess de Bremontal alone in her chateau as Prussian troops move into the neighbourhood. Here are the first English translations of Maupassant's two unfinished novels, The Foreign Soul [L'Ame etrangere] and The Angelus [L'Angelus], together with full critical apparatus, including secondary sources outlining Maupassant's future plot ideas and an essay on The Foreign Soul by Paul Bourget.

A Study Guide for Guy de Maupassant's "Two Friends"

A Study Guide for Guy de Maupassant's Author: Gale, Cengage Learning
Publisher: Gale, Cengage Learning
ISBN: 1410361381
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 31

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Book Description
A Study Guide for Guy de Maupassant's "Two Friends," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.

Presentations of the 29th Annual SW/Texas Regional Meeting of the Popular Culture and American Culture Association

Presentations of the 29th Annual SW/Texas Regional Meeting of the Popular Culture and American Culture Association PDF Author: Gypsey Elaine Teague
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443802565
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
Gender is an often misunderstood subject area, even within the discipline even to those who teach and write about it. One of my presenters, when she first approached me to present at the conference, asked, “What does my paper really have to do with gender”? To me the answer was obvious; everything has to do with gender. Gender is everywhere from the cradle to the grave. What color blanket are we given at birth? What clothes are we laid out in at death? We are bombarded with advertisements specifically targeted at our gender, either male, female, or somewhere in between. We are judged by our gender, which is often synonymous with our sex, although in many of the presentations through the years it is becoming evident that more and more people understand the difference. Our clothing, food, entertainment, and reading material are all tied to gender, in one form or another. Gender is like the air. It is all around us, seldom thought of, but always present. In an area that spans literature, politics, sex, religion, and personal choices it is hard to get finite and clear cut delineations. The contributors are the main focus here and I have just been the ringmaster of this incredible circus of ideas. Without them this could never have gone to press and it is all our hopes that you enjoy the volume and take something away from it that you did not anticipate.

Guy de Maupassant

Guy de Maupassant PDF Author: Christopher Lloyd
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1789142482
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
The most celebrated French storyteller of the nineteenth century, Guy de Maupassant was a master of the modern short story. Offering an intriguing picture of French life, his stories derive their enduring appeal from understated artistry, extreme craftsmanship, and the universality of his characters and their aspirations and misfortunes. His career as a professional writer lasted only twelve years before it was brutally cut short by the dreadful consequences of untreatable syphilis: chronic sickness, a failed suicide attempt, insanity, paralysis, and death after eighteen months’ confinement in a clinic. In this insightful and compelling biography, the only one in English currently available, Christopher Lloyd situates Maupassant’s life and work in the literary and social context of nineteenth-century France. He skillfully introduces the reader to Maupassant’s most famous works, such as Boule de suif, Bel-Ami, and Pierre et Jean, as well as highlights the important stages and achievements of his life and legacy.

The Colonial Comedy: Imperialism in the French Realist Novel

The Colonial Comedy: Imperialism in the French Realist Novel PDF Author: Jennifer Yee
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191034207
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
Nineteenth-century French Realism focuses on metropolitan France, with Paris as its undisputed heart. Through Jennifer Yee's close reading of the great novelists of the French realist and naturalist canon - Balzac, Flaubert, Zola, Maupassant - The Colonial Comedy reveals that the colonies play a role at a distance even in the most apparently metropolitan texts. In what Edward Said called 'geographical notations' of race and imperialism the presence of the colonies off-stage is apparent as imported objects, colonial merchandise, and individuals whose colonial experience is transformative. Indeed, the realist novel registers the presence of the emerging global world-system through networks of importation, financial speculation, and immigration as well as direct colonial violence and power structures. The literature of the century responds to the last decades of French slavery, and direct colonialism (notably in Algeria), but also economic imperialism and the extension of French influence elsewhere. Far from imperialist triumphalism, in the realist novel exotic objects are portrayed as fake or mass-produced for the growing bourgeois market, while economic imperialism is associated with fraud and manipulation. The deliberate contrast of colonialism and exoticism within the metropolitan novel, and ironic distancing of colonial narratives, reveal the realist mode to be capable of questioning its own epistemological basis. The Colonial Comedy argues for the existence in the nineteenth century of a Critical Orientalism characterized by critique of its own discursive foundations. Using the tools of literary analysis within a materialist approach, The Colonial Comedy opens up the domestic Paris-Provinces axis to signifying chains pointing towards the colonial space.

Degenerative Realism

Degenerative Realism PDF Author: Christy Wampole
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231546033
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 195

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Book Description
A new strain of realism has emerged in France. The novels that embody it represent diverse fears—immigration and demographic change, radical Islam, feminism, new technologies, globalization, American capitalism, and the European Union—but these books, often best-sellers, share crucial affinities. In their dystopian visions, the collapse of France, Europe, and Western civilization is portrayed as all but certain and the literary mode of realism begins to break down. Above all, they depict a degenerative force whose effects on the nation and on reality itself can be felt. Examining key novels by Michel Houellebecq, Frédéric Beigbeder, Aurélien Bellanger, Yann Moix, and other French writers, Christy Wampole identifies and critiques this emergent tendency toward “degenerative realism.” She considers the ways these writers draw on social science, the New Journalism of the 1960s, political pamphlets, reportage, and social media to construct an atmosphere of disintegration and decline. Wampole maps how degenerative realist novels explore a world contaminated by conspiracy theories, mysticism, and misinformation, responding to the internet age’s confusion between fact and fiction with a lament for the loss of the real and an unrelenting emphasis on the role of the media in crafting reality. In a time of widespread populist anxieties over the perceived decline of the French nation, this book diagnoses the literary symptoms of today’s reactionary revival.