Le Horla

Maupassant, Guy de, 1850-1893Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

4.0

Word count: 245K words
Chapters: 25

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.Le Horla by Guy de MaupassantAuthor: Maupassant, Guy de, 1850-1893,Language: French, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: Jan 1, 2004

Editor's review

Le Horla is the most representative work of psychological horror among Maupassant's late short stories, presented here in the original French by Project Gutenberg. Told in the form of a first-person diary, the novella follows a narrator who gradually succumbs to fear and self-doubt regarding an invisible presence; the prose is calm and restrained, yet builds an increasingly suffocating sense of dread. Maupassant suffered from mental illness for much of his life, and this work is often read as a literary projection of his personal experience, giving it, beyond its atmosphere of horror, a profound inquiry into the boundaries of consciousness and the blurred line between madness and reason. Readers will appreciate both the economy of late nineteenth-century French short fiction and an early form of modern psychological horror. Suitable as supplementary reading for French literature courses, or for readers interested in the Gothic tradition and psychological suspense. As a public-domain electronic text, this edition is light and portable, convenient for reading on the go and for repeated close study.

Who it's for

A good fit for

French learners who wish to improve their reading through short works in the original
Readers interested in psychological horror and Gothic literature
Students of literature researching Maupassant's late work and themes of mental illness
Readers who enjoy diary-form, first-person short fiction

Not a good fit for

Beginners unable to read French at all and unwilling to use a translation
Readers expecting fast-paced adventure stories with clear resolutions
Readers sensitive to oppressive, fearful atmospheres who are easily unsettled

Reading tips

Read through once to grasp the rhythm of the diary narration, then go back and trace the turning points in the narrator's psychological state.
Guess unfamiliar words from context first, and look them up only after finishing a passage, so as not to break the atmosphere.
Read alongside a Chinese translation, focusing on the restrained, precise choice of adjectives and verbs in the original.
After finishing, consult biographical material on Maupassant and consider the relationship between the text and the author's mental state.

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

What level of French is needed to read this work?

The original is short, but its vocabulary is fairly literary and its sentences somewhat complex. Readers with intermediate French reading ability and a grasp of common past tenses can attempt it; beginners are advised to start with a translation or read bilingually, then return to the original to appreciate the language.

What kind of story is Le Horla?

It is a first-person diary-form psychological horror novella, centering on the narrator's fear of and self-doubt about an invisible presence. The story does not rely on gore; instead it builds tension through accumulated detail and the narrator's mental state, combining features of Gothic literature and modern psychological narrative.

What are the features of the Gutenberg edition?

Project Gutenberg provides a public-domain electronic text that is easy to obtain and light in size, suitable for reading on electronic devices. This edition is in the original French, without detailed notes or an introduction; readers who need background material must supply it themselves or use an annotated print edition alongside.

Comments

Find this book

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Maupassant, Guy de, 1850-1893 Author

Guy de Maupassant (1850–1893) was a renowned French novelist. This library holds 69 of his works, including short-story collections, novels, and complete editions. His representative works include Une vie, Boule de Suif, Bel Ami, and multi-volume complete collections of his short stories and writings. Public information is limited, so his biographical details are not elaborated here; nevertheless, the works in this library show that he excelled at short stories while also writing well-structured novels. His short stories often capture turning points in ordinary lives and human weaknesses through calm, restrained narration, while his novels focus on social class, desire, and fate. His language is concise, his observation precise, and his endings forceful, and his influence on later short-story writing is profound.