A Century Of French Fiction Classic Reprint

Excerpt from A Century of French Fiction This book is a study of novels, not of novelists. It seeks to show the development of what has come to be the chief genre in the most artistic of European literatures. The limitations that this purpose involves are obvious. Biography belongs here only in so far as heredity or environment influence those qualities in an author by which he in turn influences the development of fiction. With some novelists, such as George Sand, these are very significant; with others, such as Daudet, they are hardly significant at all. The poems, dramas, or essays of novelists are usually passed in silence, though they may be, as with Sainte-Beuve, the chief title to literary distinction. And in regard to the novels themselves, this book is less concerned with what is done than with how it is done; it seeks, not to retell a story, but to convey an artistic impression, and in the space that it accords to the 115 novelists and 688 novels or short stories that it names it is less influenced by an author's popularity than by the excellence or novelty of his technic, his style, or his ideas of the functions, ethical, social, philosophical, or artistic, of the novel. Many writers are little read who have been studied by those who are read much. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from Twentieth Century French Writers: Reviews and Reminiscences I meant this book to be an image, a reflection, of the Twentieth Century in France, so far as it is shown in literature during the first fourteen years of its course. But my book is small, the subject is vast: an actual, living movement, a growing generation, is a difficult thing to copy - it will not keep still! And it branches out so wide: there are so many French writers of the younger sort! I am overcome with remorse when I think of the gifted beings whom I have left out! I remember that child whom Saint Augustine saw, trying to gather the sea into his little shell; like him, I see the waters stretching illimitably: I have only brought away a sample. Yet those who taste it may have some faint idea, if not of the breadth and the numerousness of the literary move ment in France, at least of its savour and its quality. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from A Tableau of French Literature During the Eighteenth Century Without doubt, we mav apply here the words of an illustrious academician, spoken the following year, in the bosom of that assembly in which he was about to take his place. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from A Short History of French Literature Mr. Hudson's death on the 12th of August 1918, at Droitwich, came as a shock; but not altogether to those by whom he was best known as an unanticipated blow. In 1913 he had had a disabling attack of rheumatic fever, and he was well aware his heart was weak. Indeed, he once remarked to one who some eight years ago remonstrated with him for overtaxing his strength that he had good reason to suppose his span of life would be short, and that he had much that he wished to write. This is the nemesis of the critical profession. Before one can criticise, one must have read and studied; and when at fifty "the ship is cheered," one may perhaps hear the evening bell. Not that Mr. Hudson's energy was in any degree abated. His last book on Nineteenth Century Literature was as ripe and easy as anything he had produced, a thing let fall from copiousness and a mind stored to the full. Learning is a word that in this country has come to bear a very particular connotation. One must know more about some one subject, however minute or subdivided, than others do; or one must labour in the mine and bring to the surface what has not been properly accessible before. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from History of French Literature in the Eighteenth Century Let us not consider as mere chance, gentlemen, a state of mind, which is easily explained. The seventeenth century is the logical sequence, the natural production of the sixteenth. In reference to philosophy and thought in general, the human mind always proceeds in this manner: it makes progress by antithesis and reaction, and resembles the pendulum, which unceasingly oscillates from right to left and from left to right. But the pendulum moves in a fixed space, and the value of one of its oscillations is constantly compensated by that of the other, while the action and reaction of the human mind do not entirely destroy each other, some quantity remains, and these quantities, added together, make up the sum of its progress. At the first glance, man seems to us to undo to the same extent what he has already done; but if we extend the field of our observation, we shall be convinced of the real and gradual advancement of human nature. Whether this advancement is for good or evil, is a different question. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from Select Tales By Modern French Writers: Edited With English Notes And A Chronological Table Illustrating The History Of French Fiction The spirit of rebellion against authority would naturally manifest itself strongly in a society where class-distinctions stood out so clearly marked, and where, between the feudal barons on the one side and the immense crowd of vassals. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from The Great Modern French Stories: A Chronological Anthology Mme. De Stael, however, had much to do with the liberal izing Of French letters. On the formal and aesthetic side Of literature her in uence was nugatory, but she reacted in a salutary manner against the cramping restrictions Of the purely classic viewpoint. She brought new, if borrowed, ideas to the novel; she broadened its outlook; and she awakened in the younger generation of writers a spirit Of freedom and intrepidity. It was the fecundity of her thought which enriched all the serious fiction writing which fol lowed her. Her Delphine and Corinne, though scarcely read today, played very much the same part in the devel Opment Of French fiction that the works of Richter and Goethe played in the development Of German fiction. The novel became a medium not for esthetic form but for esthetic ideas. In her the literature Of her country donned the garb of cosmopolitanism. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."