Les historiettes de Tallemant des Réaux, tome quatrième

Tallemant des Réaux, 1619-1690Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.6
Word count
701K words
Chapters
71

Tags

Foreign Language Books History Books Portrait GalleryAnecdotesComplex HumanityHumor ReliefDocumentary Narrative17th Century FranceSocial ObservationSalon Gossip

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.Les historiettes de Tallemant des Réaux, tome quatrième by Tallemant des RéauxAuthor: Tallemant des Réaux, 1619-1690,Language: French, Class: DC: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: France, Andorra, Monaco, Release Date: Apr 8, 2013

Editor's review

Volume Four of Les historiettes de Tallemant des Réaux is one installment of the anecdote collection by the seventeenth-century French writer Tallemant des Réaux (1619–1690), released by Project Gutenberg as a public-domain French ebook. Tallemant's Historiettes are known for short, pungent, intimately observed accounts, largely concerning his contemporaries and court society, and are frequently cited in studies of seventeenth-century French social and literary history. This volume is the fourth of the set and continues the note-form style of the earlier volumes: brief entries, many in number, suited to dipping in rather than reading straight through. Its value lies in the details and tone it preserves beyond official history, giving readers a sense of conversation in the salons and at court; its limitations are that the text is the original French, lacks modern scholarly annotation, and is dense with names and allusions that can overwhelm the non-specialist. The Gutenberg edition is plainly set, with no introduction or index, and is best used alongside a reference work on French history or an introductory study.

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Reading tips

  1. First learn the basic circle of seventeenth-century French court and salon figures, then move into the entries
  2. Skim and jot notes as you go rather than reading the whole volume in order
  3. Make small character cards for dense clusters of names, recording identities and relationships
  4. Compare with contemporary memoirs or letter collections to appreciate the note form as historical source material

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.

Contents

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FAQ

Is this book a novel or historical material? It is not a novel but an anecdote collection written in note form by Tallemant des Réaux, recording the words, deeds, and observations of his contemporaries. Such texts fall between memoir and unofficial history: they have historical value but also carry the author's personal stance and hearsay, and should be read against other sources.
Why must one read the original French? This Gutenberg version is the original French text, with no Chinese translation or modern annotation. Much of the pleasure of the Historiettes comes from the tone and phrasing of the period, which the original preserves best; readers with insufficient French may consult existing translations or relevant studies first, then return to passages in the original.
Do I need to read the first three volumes before Volume Four? The entries are relatively independent, so reading Volume Four directly will not leave the understanding entirely broken, but the people and events often echo earlier volumes. For research purposes, it is better to learn the set's editorial structure and main figures first, then read by theme rather than strictly by volume.
Is the Gutenberg edition suitable for scholarly citation? The Gutenberg edition is a free public-domain electronic text, convenient for searching and reading, but it usually lacks edition information, collation records, and page numbers, so direct scholarly citation is not rigorous. Formal research should check authoritative annotated editions or original printings and note the version relied upon.

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

Tallemant des Réaux, 1619-1690 Author

Tallemant des Réaux (1619–1690) was a French writer best known for his anecdotal collection, Les historiettes. The six-volume Les historiettes de Tallemant des Réaux is his main surviving work, consisting largely of anecdotes, character sketches, and intimate records of seventeenth-century French high society and literary circles. Lively and slightly satirical in tone, it blends historical value with literary interest. These short pieces are not systematic history but fragments heard and observed by the author; their vivid detail makes them a useful source for later study of the manners and literary life of the period. Public information is limited, and biographical details are largely uncertain, yet the collection reveals an observant, concise writer skilled in plain description and irony. The work is often regarded as part of the memoir and character-portrait tradition in French classical literature and is valuable for understanding seventeenth-century French society.