French Literature – Interesting Literature

Alain-Fournier’s Le Grand Meaulnes: An Analysis of Nostalgia

In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle analyses Alain-Fournier’s curious novel about lost innocence

Published in 1913, The Lost Estate (Le Grand Meaulnes) (Penguin Classics) is the one novel by Henri Alban-Fournier, otherwise known as Alain-Fournier (the hyphen was supposedly left in to differentiate him from a racing driver of the same name). The English novelist John Fowles called this novel ‘the greatest novel of adolescence in European literature’; it is the one book carried around America by the protagonist of Jack Kerouac’s cult classic On the Road (1957), and it possibly even inspired F. Scott Fitzgerald’s eventual title for The Great Gatsby (1925). Alain-Fournier spent some time in England in 1905, working for a wallpaper factory in west London (which may go a little way towards explaining his interest in houses and habitation in this novel). He died in action in the first few weeks of the First World War, in 1914. Le Grand Meaulnes has been popular with French and English readers for a century, but has received relatively little critical analysis. In some ways a coming of age novel, it combines fairy-tale elements with the realities of France in the early twentieth century.

The double title of the novel as it comes to us points up the difficulty of translating its original title, which refers to the larger-than-life, charismatic youth, Augustin Meaulnes, who arrives at the school where the book’s narrator, the fifteen-year-old François Seurel, lives with his parents (who are both teachers).

12 Interesting Facts about French Literature

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

French literature has often been one step ahead of the literary curve, to risk mixing our progressive metaphors. Before T. S. Eliot and other Anglophone poets had found a way to write about the modern city, Charles Baudelaire had already shown a way forward. In the realm of medieval romance, French writers and troubadours led the way. Gustave Flaubert influenced James Joyce, Henry James, and countless others. So, in this post, we thought we’d pay homage to French literature and Francophone writers by sharing a dozen of our favourite interesting facts about French writers and French literature.

The most popular novel among soldiers in the American Civil War was Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables.

Georges Perec wrote a novel, La disparition, without once using the letter ‘e’ (apart from four times on the title-page, presumably, when the author’s name is cited).

French philosopher and critic Roland Barthes was killed by a laundry van.

French writer Colette started her working day by picking the fleas off her cat and would write only on blue paper, by artificial light, in her bare feet.

A Short Analysis of Moliere’s Tartuffe

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Tartuffe is one of Molière’s masterpieces. The play was first performed as a three-act comedy in May 1664, and was immediately denounced for supposedly ‘attacking’ religion through its portrayal of the pious titular hypocrite, Tartuffe. The religious zealots who objected to the play eventually persuaded King Louis XIV (who had actually enjoyed the play) to have it banned. Sadly, this was not the last time religious people would take exception to comedy (and comedy that isn’t even poking fun at religion at all, but rather foolish devotion to a charlatan and impostor). Because of this early misinterpretation of Molière’s play, it is worth analysing Tartuffe more closely, to determine precisely what the play is saying about piety, hypocrisy, and gullibility.

A Very Short Biography of George Sand

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘George’ was the pseudonym of choice for nineteenth-century women writers: George Eliot (Marian Evans), George Egerton (Mary Chavelita Dunne). But these women were following an unconventional French writer in choosing to Georgify themselves for publication. In this post, we offer a very short biography of George Sand (1804-76), focusing on the most fascinating aspects of her life.