Guy de Maupassant's Selected Works

Name: Guy de Maupassant's Selected Works
Author: Unknown Author
ISBN: 9780393523102

by Unknown Author

448 pages2016Norton & Company, Incorporated, W. W.ISBN 9780393523102

Maupassant, guy de, 1850-1893 Criticism and interpretation

Open in BookOwl Download on App Store

About this book

"Guy de Maupassant's Selected Works highlights the essential works of the famed writer in a masterful new translation. The tales are organized along predominant themes from Maupassant's body of work: nineteenth-century French society, the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, and the supernatural. Maupassant skillfully crafts portraits of the daily struggles and unseen superstitions of nineteenth-century France. Readers of this edition will find explanatory footnotes and an introduction by the editor. The text of these twenty-eight stories and two novellas has been newly translated. "Contexts" looks at the many influences in Maupassant's life from politics and social types to women, love and marriage, the supernatural, and pessimism, illness and despair. In this section, readers will be presented with a collection of letters, articles, essays, and prefaces that examine these core themes. "Criticism" provides a comprehensive overview of early and modern commentary on Guy de Maupassant's body of work and the stories in this edition, including nineteenth-century reviews by contemporaires like Henry James and Joseph Conrad and numerous modern critical essays that follow the same thematic approach as the collection. A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included."--

Publication Details

Publisher: Norton & Company, Incorporated, W. W.
Published: 2016
Pages: 448
ISBN: 9780393523102

About Unknown Author

Guy de Maupassant, né le 5 août 1850 au château de Miromesnil près de Tourville-sur-Arques (France) et mort le 6 juillet 1893 dans le 16e arrondissement de Paris, est un écrivain et journaliste littéraire français. Lié à Gustave Flaubert et à Émile Zola, Maupassant a marqué la littérature française par ses six romans, dont *Une vie* en 1883, *Bel-Ami* en 1885, *Pierre et Jean* en 1887-1888, et surtout par ses nouvelles (parfois intitulées contes) comme *Boule de Suif* en 1880, les *Contes de la bécasse* (1883) ou Le Horla (1887). Ces œuvres retiennent l’attention par leur force réaliste, la présence importante du fantastique et par le pessimisme qui s’en dégage le plus souvent, mais aussi par la maîtrise stylistique. La carrière littéraire de Maupassant se limite à une décennie — de 1880 à 1890 — avant qu’il ne sombre peu à peu dans la folie et ne meure peu avant l'âge de 43 ans. Reconnu de son vivant, il conserve un renom de premier plan, renouvelé encore par les nombreuses adaptations cinématographiques de ses œuvres. ---------- (Henry René Albert) Guy De Maupassant is generally considered to be the greatest French writer of short stories. One account says the location of his birth was the Château de Miromesnil, in Dieppe, though this is not certain. His paternal ancestors were of the minor aristocracy, and his maternal grandfather, Paul Le Poittevin, was Gustave Flaubert's godfather. His parents separated when he was 11 years old. Maupassant was gifted with a photographic memory, which aided him in recollecting events and characters for his stories. As a teenager, Maupassant was shown, by the poet Algernon Swinburne (1837-1909), a mummified hand. He used this haunting image in his early short story La Main Ecorchée (1875). In 1869 Maupassant started to study law in Paris, but soon, at age 20, he volunteered to serve in the army during Franco-Prussian War. After his return to Paris, Maupassant joined the literary circle of Gustave Flaubert, who intro