The Confession of a Child of the Century — Volume 3

Alfred de MussetProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 4.4
Word count
130K words
Chapters
13

Tags

English Originals Foreign Literature Love EntanglementsTragic LoveComplex HumanityPsychological InsightGrowing UpRomanticismYouthful ConfusionConfession NarrativeSelf-ReflectionModern China

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.The Confession of a Child of the Century — Volume 3 by Alfred de MussetAuthor: Musset, Alfred de, 1810-1857,Language: English, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: Apr 1, 2003

Editor's review

The Confession of a Child of the Century is Musset's semi-autobiographical novel; this volume is the English translation of its third part, from Project Gutenberg. Writing in the first person with confessional candor, Musset portrays a young man's emotional entanglements and spiritual malaise, in prose strongly lyrical and introspective; Volume 3 continues this method of advancing the narrative through psychological description. The point of reading this volume lies not in a dramatic plot but in how the narrator views his own feelings and situation, and readers can sense nineteenth-century French Romanticism's attention to the individual psyche. As a volume in a serial publication, it is not a self-contained story: characters and emotional threads carry over from the previous two volumes, so reading it alone may feel underprepared. The English translation preserves the work's notably lyrical tone; it rewards slow, attentive reading and can be understood alongside Musset's poetry and biography.

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Reading tips

  1. Familiarize yourself with the characters and emotional threads of the first two volumes before this one for a smoother transition.
  2. Focus on the narrator's self-analysis rather than rushing to follow the plot.
  3. Read alongside Musset's poetry or biographical material to understand its lyrical underpinnings.
  4. Slow down during long monologues and briefly note shifts in the narrator's mood afterward.

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

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13

FAQ

Can I read this volume without having read the first two? You can, but this volume carries over the characters and emotional threads of the first two, so starting here means missing groundwork and finding the narrator's psychological shifts harder to follow. It is better to learn the prior context or read in order.
Is this book strongly plot-driven? Its focus is not on twists and turns but on first-person confession and introspection, with lyricism and monologue making up a large share. Readers expecting a tight storyline may find the experience different from their expectations; those who enjoy psychological writing will find it rewarding.
Why is it recommended to read alongside Musset's biography? The novel is semi-autobiographical, and the narrator's emotional malaise relates to the author's own experiences and the mood of his era. Basic background helps in understanding the recurring lyrical tone and self-scrutiny, though the novel should not be taken as strict biography.

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About the author

Alfred de Musset Author · French · 1810–1857

Alfred de Musset (1810–1857) was a French Romantic poet, playwright and novelist. He wrote the autobiographical novel The Confession of a Child of the Century, which portrays personal feeling and the malaise of its era in delicate prose, and is also known for the play Lorenzaccio and the poems collected as the Nights; his work is celebrated for its emotional sincerity. He was elected to the Académie française in 1852, reflecting his standing in the literary world of his time. The collection here holds 13 of his works, including several volumes and the complete edition of The Confession of a Child of the Century, as well as volumes of his complete works. Writing across fiction, drama and poetry, he turned inner experience into literature and holds a place in French Romantic literature.