Gerfaut — Volume 2

Bernard, Charles de, 1804-1850Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.2

Word count: 182K words
Chapters: 19

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Gerfaut — Volume 2 by Charles de BernardAuthor: Bernard, Charles de, 1804-1850,Language: English, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: Apr 1, 2003

Editor's review

Volume 2 of Gerfaut continues the characters and plot of Volume 1 and brings the story toward its conclusion; it is the indispensable second half for understanding the work as a whole. In this volume Bernard gives more attention to shifts in his characters' psychology and changes in their social relationships, while the narrative retains the unhurried tone of a nineteenth-century French novel. For scholars, reading the two volumes in sequence makes it possible to observe how the author paces the story and handles his characters' fates; for general readers, the experience of this volume depends more heavily on the immersion established in Volume 1, and reading it alone easily loses the context. As a Project Gutenberg public-domain ebook, it likewise has no modern annotations; the text is plain and suited to use as supplementary material in a foreign-literature course or for private literary wandering. Readers are advised to treat the two volumes as a single whole, read them in order, and look back at the direction of the characters' relationships after finishing, so as to appreciate the overall design of this neglected nineteenth-century work.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers who have finished Volume 1 and want to learn the story's ending
Scholars studying structure and characterization in the nineteenth-century French novel
Literature lovers who enjoy reading public-domain classics systematically

Not a good fit for

Readers who have not read Volume 1 and want to start directly with this book
Readers seeking a self-contained work with a plot that stands on its own
Readers who need modern annotations and detailed background explanation

Reading tips

Be sure to read Volume 1 before entering this volume, to avoid a break in the characters' relationships.
After finishing, look back at the changes in the characters' attitudes across both volumes and trace the plot's thread.
Keep simple notes on the characters' relationships to help grasp the subtle shifts in social scenes.
If used for a course, study it alongside materials on the history of nineteenth-century French literature.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Can I skip Volume 1 and read Volume 2 directly?

Not recommended. Volume 2 continues the characters and plot of Volume 1; reading it alone leaves you without necessary background, and the characters' motives and relationships are hard to understand. It is best to read both volumes in order to grasp the structure and ending of the whole work.

Roughly how much reading do the two volumes amount to together?

This book is a long novel published in volumes, and the two volumes together form the complete story. The exact length varies with the layout of the electronic edition; readers can first check the text size on the Project Gutenberg page and then plan their reading time, preferably finishing it over several sessions.

Is this edition suitable for citation in a paper?

The Project Gutenberg edition can serve as a source for reading and preliminary citation of the public-domain text, but it usually contains no modern scholarly annotations or authoritative publication information. For formal citation in a paper, it is advisable to check the information against an authoritative print edition or a version in an academic database.

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About the author

Bernard, Charles de, 1804-1850 Author

Charles de Bernard (1804–1850) was a nineteenth-century French writer known chiefly for his novels. Public information about him is limited, and reliable details of his life, exact nationality, and education are not available; his works nevertheless suggest that he was active in the literary milieu where French Romanticism and realism overlapped. The library holds seven of his works, all centering on the novel Gerfaut, including the complete edition, individual volumes, and a collection of quotes and images compiled by Widger. The novel is notable for its delicate portrayal of character psychology and social scenes, showing the observant and satirical quality typical of French fiction of manners; its circulation in separate volumes also indicates a readership at the time. Overall, Bernard's writing emphasizes character depiction and plot development, with a composed yet pointed style that offers some reference value for understanding the development of the nineteenth-century French novel.