The Old Merchant's Home

Freytag, Gustav, 1816-1895Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.2

Word count: 1.8M words
Chapters: 184

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.Vanha kauppiaskoti by Gustav FreytagAuthor: Freytag, Gustav, 1816-1895,Language: Finnish, Class: PT: Language and Literatures: Germanic, Scandinavian, and Icelandic literatures, Release Date: Jul 10, 2017

Editor's review

Vanha kauppiaskoti ("The Old Merchant's House") is a Finnish translation of a work by the German writer Gustav Freytag, a public-domain e-book from Project Gutenberg. Freytag excelled in bourgeois subject matter; this work centers on a merchant family's life, attending to generational relations, professional ethics, and the bourgeoisie's self-understanding, with the social observation and moral concern of nineteenth-century realism. Its reading value lies in showing the spread of German bourgeois literature in the Nordic countries and in the special significance of the Finnish translation as material for reception history. The book suits readers in comparative literature and translation history, and advanced learners who want to encounter Finnish through the feel of an older text. Note that this is an old Finnish translation whose style is distant from modern Finnish, and that the electronic edition has no modern introduction, so non-Finnish readers will need a translation or research materials for support.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Comparative literature readers studying the Nordic reception of German bourgeois literature
Literature lovers interested in nineteenth-century bourgeois family and professional-ethics themes
Advanced learners with some Finnish who want the flavor of an old translation
Researchers in translation or reception history needing public-domain translated material

Not a good fit for

General Chinese readers who do not read Finnish and have no translation at hand
Casual readers expecting fast plotting or strong dramatic conflict
Language beginners needing modern notes, introductions, and vocabulary lists

Reading tips

Learn the background of Freytag's bourgeois fiction first, then follow the family and professional-ethics main line.
Finnish readers can compare a modern translation or the German original to sense the old translation's differences.
Take notes on character threads by family relations and generational conflict to clarify the narrative layers.
Record features of the translation's language separately as material for observing translation history.

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 read this without knowing Finnish?

The text is an old Finnish translation, so direct reading without Finnish is difficult. First find the German original or a reliable translation in another language to learn the content, then use this book as comparative material for translation language and reception history.

What does the title "The Old Merchant's House" refer to?

The title points to a merchant family and its living space; the work concerns bourgeois family relations, professional ethics, and generational change. For specific characters and plot, rely on the original text and avoid over-inferring from the title.

How different is the Finnish of this old translation from today's?

Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Finnish translations differ from the modern standard in spelling, syntax, and word choice, so reading feels unfamiliar. Readers with some Finnish can adapt gradually with a dictionary and a parallel translation.

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About the author

Freytag, Gustav, 1816-1895 Author

Gustav Freytag (1816–1895) was a German writer, playwright and literary theorist. Ten of his works are held in this collection, spanning dramatic theory, novels and cultural-historical essays. His study Die Technik des Dramas systematically examines dramatic structure, and its discussion of the five-act play is often cited in later scholarship on drama. The novel Soll und Haben (published in English as Debit and Credit) takes commercial life as its subject, portraying the professional ethics and social world of the bourgeois class, while Das Nest der Zaunkönige belongs among his narrative works. He also wrote the Pictures of German Life series, whose volumes sketch scenes of German social life from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century. His writing combines realistic description with cultural observation. Public information is limited, and details such as nationality and exact dates are not recorded in the collection, so no inference is made here.