The Sea

Michelet, Jules, 1798-1874Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.9

Word count: 514K words
Chapters: 52

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 Sea (La Mer) by Jules MicheletAuthor: Michelet, Jules, 1798-1874,Language: English, Class: QH: Science: Natural history, Release Date: May 30, 2013

Editor's review

Jules Michelet's The Sea is a prose work of natural history that fuses natural history with humanistic reflection. Writing with a literary touch, the author depicts tides, coasts, marine life and seafaring life, while constantly turning natural phenomena toward thoughts on life, labor and human destiny, so that the book can be read both as natural history and as essays. Its value lies not in providing systematic, rigorous modern oceanographic knowledge, but in showing how nineteenth-century people viewed the sea and how they used it to understand themselves. The book's extended and lyrical passages of seascape are especially rewarding and suit slow reading in a quiet setting. Readers should note that some ideas in the book are products of the author's era and differ from today's scientific understanding; they are best viewed with a historical and literary eye. The Project Gutenberg edition is a public-domain English ebook, convenient for searching and comparative reading, and suitable as an introductory or further reading text in nature writing and maritime literature.

Who it's for

A good fit for

General readers interested in essays on the sea and nature writing
Readers who want to understand how nineteenth-century natural history combined with humanistic thought
Learners who need a public-domain English text for reading or translation practice
Readers who enjoy slow-reading essays and finding food for thought in descriptive writing

Not a good fit for

Readers seeking systematic knowledge of modern marine science
Readers who prefer tightly plotted, highly narrative popular books
Readers impatient with nineteenth-century style and lyrical discussion

Reading tips

Start with chapters on coasts, tides and seafaring observations, get a feel for the style, then read the whole book
Prepare a map or basic marine natural-history reference for comparison, distinguishing literary description from scientific fact
After each chapter, write down the thoughts the author draws from nature to trace the thread of his humanistic concern
Read alongside modern nature writing to observe how seascape writing has changed over time

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

Is this book a strict work of marine science?

No. It is closer to a literary natural-history essay, focused on description and reflection rather than systematic argument. It touches on marine phenomena and organisms, but its statements bear the mark of the nineteenth century, and readers should not use it as a modern oceanography textbook.

Is the public-domain English ebook difficult to read?

The text is nineteenth-century English prose with long sentences and much rhetoric, which poses some challenge for non-native readers. It is advisable to begin with the shorter descriptive chapters, use a dictionary and focus on the main idea of each paragraph rather than pondering every word, and read the whole book once you have grown used to the style.

Is it suitable for translation practice?

Fairly suitable. The descriptive and discursive passages are clear, and excerpts can be selected for English-to-Chinese practice, with emphasis on handling rhetoric and sentence structure. When practicing, consult the context and avoid word-for-word translation divorced from it.

Comments

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About the author

Michelet, Jules, 1798-1874 Author

Michelet, Jules (1798-1874) was a renowned French historian, celebrated for his monumental Histoire de France. The collection holds 36 of his works, including the multi-volume Histoire de France as well as titles on the sea and medieval witchcraft: La mer, a literary treatment of nature, and La Sorcière: The Witch of the Middle Ages, which focuses on witchcraft and persecution in the Middle Ages. His writing combines the rigor of a historian with a poet's imagination, turning historical sources into vivid, emotionally charged narrative, and he occupies an important place in French Romantic historiography. In this collection his works are classed under inspirational growth, perhaps for their deep reflection on life and history. Public information is limited, so biographical details are not elaborated here; readers may approach his scholarship and style through the works mentioned above.